Spillover
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  • Published: 15 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099522850
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $30.00

Spillover

Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Aug 2013
EBook
4 Oct 2012
Audiobook
30 Apr 2020
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A gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic

Read this gripping, timely book about the transmission of deadly viruses from animal to human populations, and how we can fight the current Covid-19 pandemic.

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD ON CORONAVIRUS

As globalization spreads and as we destroy the ancient ecosystems, we encounter strange and dangerous infections that originate in animals but that can be transmitted to humans. Diseases that were contained are being set free and the results are potentially catastrophic.

In a journey that takes him from southern China to the Congo, from Bangladesh to Australia, David Quammen tracks these infections to their source, and asks what we can do to prevent some new pandemic spreading across the face of the earth.

As we continue to feel the global impact of Covid-19, discover the book that predicted this viral disaster and the science that could stop the next one in its tracks.

'A tremendous book...this gives you all you need to know and all you should know' Sunday Times
'Chilling... [A] brilliant, devastating book' Daily Mail
'A frightening and fascinating masterpiece of science reporting that reads like a detective story' Walter Isaacson
  • Published: 15 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9780099522850
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $30.00
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About the author

David Quammen

David Quammen's sixteen previous books include The Tangled Tree, The Song of the Dodo, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, and Spillover, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Premio Letterario Merck, in Rome. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside, among other magazines, and is a three-time winner of the National Magazine Award.

Quammen shares a home in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Betsy Gaines Quammen, author of American Zion, and with two Russian wolfhounds, a cross-eyed cat, and a rescue python.

Visit him at DavidQuammen.com

portrait photo of David Quammen

Also by David Quammen

Breathless
The Heartbeat of the Wild
Yellowstone
The Chimp and the River
Ebola
Monster Of God
The Song Of The Dodo
See all

Praise for Spillover

Quammen’s book is compelling and shows that there are many candidates out there vying to be the next pandemic

Euan Lawson, British Journal of General Practice

A frightening and fascinating masterpiece of science reporting that reads like a detective story

Walter Isaacson

Quammen has a wide range of knowledge, an agile pen, and a generous heart

James Gorman, New York Times Book Review

A tremendous book...this gives you all you need to know and all you should know. Quammen’s research and the analysis make sensationalism unnecessary

Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Mr Quammen is not just among our best science writers but among our best writers, period...that he hasn’t won a non-fiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment... Quammen is a patient explainer and a winning observer, he has a novelistic flair for describing his fellow humans... Quammen, combining physical and intellectual adventure, wraps his canny explorations into powerful moral witness

Dwight Garner, New York Times

One of that rare breed of science journalists who blend exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling... This is a timely, serious and impressive work that marks the maturation of a field of microbiology

Nathan Wolfe, Nature

Terrific…the stories of the victims and the scientists are told in astonishing detail

Caroline Ash, Guardian

He [Quammen] ranges with ease over decades and continents, drawing upon years of interviews and field trips with scientists...[he] is a lively writer and a good detective, tracing diseases from their first appearance back to their origins—in some cases, still unsettled... Quammen does not shy away from the lurid question of the "next big one" that will be on readers’ minds from the start

The Economist

It may have been eight years since David Quammen's Spillover was first published, but its prescience is spookily topical this plague year

Richard Dawkins, New Statesman

Travelling deep into the rainforest with the scientists hoping to identify the next pandemic pathogen, Quammen's book is plotted like a detective thriller

Gaia Vince, Guardian