Spillover

By: David Quammen

Narrated by: Jonathan Yen

A masterpiece of science reporting that tracks the animal origins of emerging human diseases.

The emergence of strange new diseases is a frightening problem that seems to be getting worse. In this age of speedy travel, it threatens a worldwide pandemic. We hear news reports of Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and something called Hendra killing horses and people in Australia - but those reports miss the big truth that such phenomena are part of a single pattern. The bugs that transmit these diseases share one thing: they originate in wild animals and pass to humans by a process called spillover. David Quammen tracks this subject around the world. He recounts adventures in the field - netting bats in China, trapping monkeys in Bangladesh, stalking gorillas in the Congo - with the world’s leading disease scientists. In Spillover, Quammen takes the listener along on this astonishing quest to learn how, where from, and why these diseases emerge, and he asks the terrifying question: What might the next big one be?

©2012 David Quammen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Horrible narration

Would you be willing to try another one of Jonathan Yen’s performances?

The content of the book is interesting, but the narration is so painfully boring that I'm about to delete the book and I'm not even one third of the way finished yet. If this man's voice were a drug, it would most definitely be Valium.

Do yourself a favor and buy this in paperback instead.

Surprising

When I ordered this book I immediately noticed that it was more than 21 hours long. Given the subject matter I was determined to try it, but had a nagging feeling that it would just be too dry to get through. I was wrong. The author’s writing was first rate and thus held my interest through the entire presentation. Thanks, David!

A wealth of Information

If you are truly interesting in the subject matter of Infectious Viruses, this book provides a bounty of well- researched information.

Didn’t expect to actually love it!

24 hours about viruses seems daunting and possibly boring, but given the current COVID-19 crisis I wanted to learn more. I didn’t just doggedly muddle through this, I actually looked forward to listening to it and totally got sucked in! I learned so much from this book and had fun doing it! It was lively and engaging and kept my attention for the full day’s worth of listening I did over the past month. I couldn’t recommend it more for someone wanting to learn more about how diseases work and how they can travel between humans and animals.

Excellent - dense, informative, and gallows humor

I have listened to this book several times, it is excellent for popular science. I especially like the way Quammen connects issues and anecdotes that may seem like separate topics, on the way to the relationship being revealed. The whole idea of adaptations of microbes is fantastic as well as the stuff of nightmares - there are probably a half dozen Hot Zones' worth of material here. I highly recommend.

Startlingly Prescient

Written before the 2014-15 EBOV outbreak, Quammen goes through all sorts of zoonoses and what we have learned thus far. The book makes this most recent outbreak far more understandable to the layperson. Mostly, though, it opens your eyes to the idea that an apocalyptic outbreak of something is on the foreseeable horizon and that the exponential growth of humanity itself may, in fact, be the outbreak to fear the most.

Dry, but great

The book is fascinating and filled with interesting nuggets of knowledge. The reader is a little monotone, which I found comforting while driving but too easy to get distracted from while doing anything else.

A must read if you love adventure and mystery

This is a real life journey into the scary and amazing word of virus and how the unknown is more scary then any sifi movie or novel. This is real life told from the front lines of virus hunting and discovery. I work the in blood born disease area and knew some of the foundations to disease such as AIDS, lime, and Sars, but this book took what I know and understand to an all new level. Great listen.

Technical, but Captivating

There are many interesting stories told by the author; technical prose is peppered in-between the more fascinating sections.

A great listen, save for... a lot of words

I really enjoyed the in-depth look into emerging zoonotic diseases and thought the book was definitely worth my time. However, the narrator's intermittent odd (and sometimes outright mis-) pronunciations really rankled me, especially some of the most recurrent words in the book, like "zoonoses." Sometimes I was able to ignore it but other times I was just incredulous about how certain pronunciations were allowed to fly in this recording. ("Tan-ZAY-nian?")