The New York Times Book Review - Carl Zimmer
Some of the scenes in Mark Honigsbaum's The Pandemic Century were so vivid they had me drafting movie treatments in my head…Whether familiar or forgotten, parrot fever or Ebola, [Honigsbaum] finds striking similarities among them. And those similarities ought to make us worried about the next outbreak. If history is any guide, things may not go well…Each chapter in The Pandemic Century is deeply researched. To report on the Zika virus, Honigsbaum visited Recife, a Brazilian city hard hit by the outbreak…His account of the 1918 influenza pandemic feels fresh, thanks to his deep dive into archives and recent research into its origins. There's much to learn here.
Publishers Weekly
11/26/2018
By focusing on nine major pandemics, from the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak to the 2015 Zika eruption, science journalist Honigsbaum (A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics) explores what has been learned about combating deadly disease over the past century. He offers a mixture of gripping storytelling and insightful science as he dissects the causes of and responses to each of these medical disasters. Whether it’s plague in Los Angeles in 1924, Legionnaires’ disease in Philadelphia in 1976, or the worldwide SARS outbreak in 2003, Honigsbaum argues that several important factors typically accompany pandemics. First, officials often mislead the public about what is actually occurring. Second, once the media catches on, it sensationalizes the outbreak, spreading panic. Third, medical researchers often “become prisoners of particular paradigms and theories of disease causation,” causing them to ignore impending threats. In today’s world, he argues, pandemics will likely be a growing problem, because human activity, from global warming-linked emissions to increased international travel, helps “microbes to occupy new ecological niches and spread to new places.” Despite all the problems he exposes, Honigsbaum also demonstrates that scientists have responded with increasing rapidity to each outbreak. Alternately chilling and optimistic, Honigsbaum’s reporting on a recurrent public health issue deserves wide attention. (Apr.)
Emerging Infectious Diseases (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) - Nkuchia M. M’ikantha
"Colorful and engaging.... The Pandemic Century could appeal to diverse categories of readers, including epidemiologists, public health workers, students, and anyone interested in understanding why, despite impressive gains in global public health preparedness and advances in disease prevention and control, pandemics continue to surprise and terrify us."
The Week - Jeva Lange
"Fascinating.... From forgotten diseases like Parrot Fever to cases relevant to today’s coronavirus outbreak, such as SARS, The Pandemic Century details a dozen different recent episodes in the history of contagious disease. The chilling conclusion is that so often these outbreaks are of our own making."
Howard Markel
"Mark Honigsbaum does a superb job covering a century’s worth of pandemics and the fears they invariably unleash. The moral of his cogent tale is that the next deadly pandemic is not a matter of if but of when, and preparing for that fact is a far better prescription than reacting with panic, fear, or indifference."
Carl Zimmer
"Some of the scenes in Mark Honigsbaum’s The Pandemic Century were so vivid they had me drafting movie treatments in my head....Whether familiar or forgotten, parrot fever or Ebola, he finds striking similarities among them. And those similarities ought to make us worried about the next outbreak. If history is any guide, things may not go well."
The Observer - Robin McKie
"[A] riveting, vivid history of modern disease outbreaks....A fascinating account of a deeply important topic—for if the past 100 years have taught us anything, it is that new diseases and viral strains will inevitably beset us, no matter how sophisticated science becomes."
Nature - Barbara Kiser
"Gripping."
David L. Heymann
"An engaging and thoughtful journey through some of the world’s greatest medical and social crises in recent decades. Honigsbaum is a worthy historian and guide to these dramatic reminders of human fallibility."
Financial Times - Anjana Ahuja
"A lively but less than reassuring read for those on exotic travels."
Booklist (starred review)
"Engrossing....Combining history, popular science, and policy, [Honigsbaum] describes each pandemic with journalistic immediacy....An important and timely work."
Public Books - Warwick Anderson
"A masterful tour of the receding horizon of past plagues.... With marked brio and impressive detail.... Honigsbaum elegantly makes the case for better understanding the ecological configurations of disease outbreaks."
Sunday Times - James McConnachie
"Informed and dramatic.... Honigsbaum is a gifted explainer of medical science—everything you need to know about epidemiology is here—but he can also write like a detective novelist."
Jeremy Farrar
"Infectious diseases remain among the most urgent health threats we face, but too often are considered something that happens to other people, far away. In our interconnected world, this is no longer true, as Honigsbaum shows. His unique account drives home the human impact of epidemics, and the need for increased preparedness."
JUNE 2019 - AudioFile
Listeners may find themselves checking for symptoms as they explore this well-researched volume detailing efforts to identify and eradicate better known and more obscure pandemics of the twentieth century, including Spanish influenza, parrot fever, AIDS and ebola. John Lee's narration appreciably enhances this illuminating audiobook. His steady voice, careful pacing, and authoritarian intonation help listeners consider the alarming statistics on worldwide deaths from pandemics and absorb the abundant medical and scientific data, although these findings occasionally become too technical for a general audience. Medical historian Honigsbaum intersperses factual information with multiple accounts of individuals struck by these illnesses and those who worked to save them. Lee's voice warms and softens to express small moments in these lost lives. M.J. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-01-13
Powerful accounts of a dozen epidemics from the last 100 years.
Journalist and medical historian Honigsbaum (Arts and Sciences/City Univ., London; A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830-1920, 2013, etc.) begins this lively, gruesome, and masterful book with the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected 500 million people and may have killed more than 100 million. Many that followed, including AIDS, Ebola, Legionnaires' disease, SARS, and Zika, are familiar to most readers. Lost to history—but no less terrifying—were the Los Angeles plague epidemic of 1924 and the wave of parrot fever that swept the nation after 1929. All mobilized the best scientific resources of the time, with results ranging from dramatic to ineffectual. Fortunately, all eventually died out, but more are inevitable as humans crowd into cities as well as into the wilderness and jungle, where new organisms await; douse our bodies' bacteria with antibiotics; and exchange viruses with pets and domestic animals. "Time and again," writes the author, "we assist microbes to occupy new ecological niches and spread to new places in ways that usually become apparent after the event. And to judge by the recent run of pandemics and epidemics, the process seems to be speeding up. If HIV and SARS were wake-up calls, then Ebola and Zika confirmed it." Most pandemics arrived without warning. Physicians and epidemiologists quickly described what was happening, often wrongly at first but eventually getting it right after massive research, brilliant insights, and no lack of courage. As Honigsbaum amply shows, politicians and journalists often ignored bad news until they couldn't and then opposed measures that might harm the local economy. Since even medical experts tended to overreact at first, the media can be excused for proclaiming the apocalypse, but they showed no lack of enthusiasm.
Avoiding the hyperbole that contemporary media relished, Honigsbaum mixes superb medical history with vivid portraits of the worldwide reactions to each event.
