Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution of People and Plagues

Wills does not provide an exhaustive review of diseases, but selects illustrative examples. I find this preferable to a less in-depth discussion of a large number of diseases. His incorporation of personal experiences, and theoretical speculations on disease and diversity add breadth and depth to this book. I thought it was excellent.

Yellow Fever, Black Goddess is interesting and anecdotal. Its highly readable by someone with only the fundamentals of parasitology and epidemiology interested in modern day epidemics. Wills takes the reader through a survey of the world's primary epidemic diseases explaining their origin, morphology, the history of their study and cure. In addition, he addresses some Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) such as syphilis and AIDS. A major thesis is the constant war of adoption taking place genetically between parasites, disease organisms and human beings. At a macro-level, humanity is changing its environment in the name of progress and to eliminate and control diseases. At the micro-level, parasites and diseases are rapidly mutating themselves to find new hosts in this new environment. On occasion, the resulting mutation is lethal to the host and becomes an epidemic (the modern term for plague). Wills style is highly readable including several personal stories to illustrate his points. Reading this book does require at least undergraduate knowledge of biology and genetics. However, the author clearly explains the more complex aspects of the subject. The discussion on cholera is particularly interesting and well done. Wills book does suffer from a lack of coordination and the discussion is uneven. The major sections address the individual diseases and parasites well. However, they are not well organized together as a whole. I imagine there is a connection in the discussion between viral, bacterial, and multicellular parasite contagion, but I failed to fully see the progression. For example, while titillating, I failed to see the connection between syphilis and malaria. Some subject diseases are better covered then others. Also, some diseases are approached in a different fashion from others. This made it difficult to compare and contrast all the diseases discussed in the book. For example, the discussion of cholera is heavily weighted toward morphology and includes personal anecdotes. Willis's discussion of syphilis,. is primarily on the historical origin of the disease. What about a personal anecdote? Yellow Fever, Black Goddess is a good introduction to modern epidemics for the college-level reader. It discusses several organisms found in the world today that can quickly flourish into epidemics or are epidemic. However, the broad theme of the book is not as well handled as the individual plagues.