Laurie Garrett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of both The Coming Plague and the more recent Betrayal of Trust.

She is an amazingly thorough journalist, with an exceptional ability to relate scientific information in a way that the average person can understand it.

The Coming Plague is really several books in one: (1) it is a tribute to the epidemiologists, physicians, nurses and others who work in global public health and risk their lives to investigate outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases; (2) an expose of the political power plays, racism, and nationalism that affect what diseases get attention-and research funding; (3)a treatise on the true nature of infectious diseases-how microbes that cause devastating pandemics often hang out undetected in human populations for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, until shifts in human living conditions, behavior or the environment create the ideal climate for a new disease or syndrome to emerge.

For example-in one of the most interesting but overlooked parts of the book-Garrett explains how current scientific thinking holds that HIV has existed in humans for hundreds of years. Although occasionally causing isolated deaths, the retrovirus was not especially lethal until wars and social disruption in Africa, and the sexual revolution in Europe and the United States created ideal conditions in which the virus could spread and mutate. This contradicts established and deeply ingrained myths that the virus “emerged” suddenly in Africa in the late 1970s.

She effectively weaves together a story of how increasing urbanization, environmental degradation and human strife are the root causes that allow microbes to shift from being minor irritants to large-scale threats to human existence.

It’s an enormous and often emotionally-challenging read, but it is worth it. One of those books that will change your perspective on almost everything.
It’s better than just a good read. In writing The Coming Plague, Garrett performed an extraordinary public service.