Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

For years, scientists have been warning us that a pandemic was all but inevitable. Now it's here, and the rest of us have a lot to learn.



Fortunately, science writer Carl Zimmer is here to guide us. In this compact volume, he tells the story of how the smallest living things known to science can bring an entire planet of people to a halt--and what we can learn from how we've defeated them in the past.



Planet of Viruses covers such threats as Ebola, MERS, and chikungunya virus; tells about recent scientific discoveries, such as a hundred-million-year-old virus that infected the common ancestor of armadillos, elephants, and humans; and shares new findings that show why climate change may lead to even deadlier outbreaks. Zimmer's lucid explanations and fascinating stories demonstrate how deeply humans and viruses are intertwined. Viruses helped give rise to the first life-forms, are responsible for many of our most devastating diseases, and will continue to control our fate for centuries. Thoroughly readable, and, for all its honesty about the threats, as reassuring as it is frightening, A Planet of Viruses is a fascinating tour of a world we all need to better understand.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. ix)
• Introduction "A Contagious Living Fluid": Tobacco Mosaic Virus (p. 1)
• Old Companions
• The Uncommon Cold Rhinovirus (p. 9)
• Looking Down from the Stars Influenza Virus (p. 15)
• Rabbits with Horns Human Papillomavirus (p. 23)
• Everywhere, In All Things
• The Enemy of Our Enemy Bacteriophages (p. 33)
• The Infected Ocean Marine Phages (p. 41)
• Our Inner Parasites Endogenous Retroviruses (p. 47)
• The Viral Future
• The Young Scourge Human Immunodeficiency Virus (p. 55)
• Becoming an American West Nile Virus (p. 65)
• Predicting the Next Plague
• Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Ebola (p. 73)
• The Long Goodbye
• Smallpox (p. 81)
• Epilogue: The Alien in the Watercooler: Mimivirus (p. 89)
• Acknowledgments (p. 95)
• Selected references (p. 97)
• Credits (p. 103)
• Index (p. 105)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Although most everyone is familiar with the word "viruses," few people are aware of the major role they play as powerful agents of change on Earth. Zimmer (Yale Univ.; The Tangled Bank, CH, Jul'10, 47-6234; Microcosm, CH, Sep'08, 46-0275) presents an intriguing journey into the world of viruses, providing a fascinating historical perspective. The author also provides a fresh look into their evolution, therapeutic value to medical science, strategies for successful disease transmission, importance in the marine environment in keeping waterborne diseases in check, and involvement in tumor formation and cancers. A collection of 11 short essays are grouped under three headings: "Old Companions," "Everywhere, in All Things," and "The Viral Future.. The epilogue focuses on mimiviruses, recently discovered viruses with large genomes, implicated in cases of pneumonia. The photographs add dimension to the text; the selected references and index are user-friendly. The writing is clear, and the scientific information is communicated in a perceptive, compelling narrative. This is an insightful book that serves as an excellent resource for understanding viruses and their relationship to humans. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. D. C. Anderson Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The effects of viruses have been known since time immemorial, thanks to the common cold, the flu, and smallpox. But when viruses were physically discovered in the late nineteenth century, it was by elimination; that is, something was discovered that caused disease but wasn't animal, plant, fungus, or bacterium. The electron microscope finally made that something visible, and its basic mechanisms were ascertained by 1950. What has been discovered about viruses since, however, dwarfs all that previous virological knowledge. For viruses are everywhere, and a recurring motif of Zimmer's information-packed, superbly readable, brief essays is the assay of a substance seawater, human sputum, subterranean warm water segregated for hundreds of thousands of years from the biology of the rest of the world thought to be relatively or positively pure finds it crawling with viruses. Obviously, not all viruses kill or even sicken. In fact, it's not so much a matter of perforce having to live with viruses as not being able to live without them, and not just because they're so tiny, ubiquitous, and numerous but also because they help produce the oxygen we breathe and because some of them disable bacteria toxic to us among other vital things. Absolutely top-drawer popular-science writing.--Olson, Ra. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Carl Zimmer is a lecturer at Yale University, where he teaches writing about science and the environment. He is the author of numerous books, including Microcosm; Parasite Rex; Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea; At the Water's Edge; and Soul Made Flesh. His numerous essays and articles on the life sciences have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, Scientific American, Discover, Time, Science, Popular Science, and National Geographic. His work has been anthologized in both The Best American Science Writing and The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.