Fascinating look at parasites and our battles against them. Once again, I am reminded how interconnected the world is. If you pull one string (or do one thing to try to help people), you get all kinds of consequences that you did not anticipate. I fear some of the scientific data is outdated in this book, since it is copyright in the eighties, but it was a fun look at the topic, and the author has a good sense of humor. ( )

Not as interesting as I'd remembered. It's a little bit about culture and cultural variation (like Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, with which I'd classed it), but it really is mostly about diseases and disease vectors. Which are interesting in themselves (did you know that the mosquitoes that carry malaria are purely nocturnal, and only in one part of the night?) but 'These people do this and therefore get diseased because (long explanation of the lifecycle of the parasite/disease)" is less interesting to me than "These people do this. And these people do this. It's exactly the opposite thing, but for the same reasons. Aren't people interesting?" So still a good book, but not as much fun as I was thinking. (and the fact that I was laid low with a common cold when I read it didn't have anything to do with my low opinion! Really!) ( )