The Life Scientific: Virus Hunters Anna Buckley (Author) Series:
Edition:
Imprint:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Co
Pub Date:
07 Jan 2021
Publishing Status:
Active
Published in: United Kingdom Hardback (Text (eye-readable)) 160pp h220mm x w144mm x s20mm 280g ISBN13: 9781474607469 ISBN13: 978-1-4746-0746-9 ISBN10: 1474607462 EAN: 9781474607469 x Description: BBC Radio 4's celebrated THE LIFE SCIENTIFIC has featured some of the world's most renowned experts in the field of deadly viruses. The interviews make sobering reading, a reminder of all the deadly viruses that have threatened global health, and why for the scientists working on the front line in the war against viruses, the arrival of Covid-19 came as no surprise. Among the contributors to this all-too-timely book are:Jeremy Farrar, before he became Director of the Wellcome Trust, worked in an Infectious Diseases Hospital in Vietnam. He was on the frontline tackling SARS and nine months later a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, H5N1. Peter Piot was at the forefront of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. He was the first to identify HIV in Africa. It took him fifteen years to persuade the world that it was also a heterosexual disease. Later as Executive Director of UN AIDS he fought for years to get the UN to take the threat of HIV seriously.Jonathan Ball studies how viruses operate at the molecular level, hoping to find their Achilles' heel and so develop effective vaccines. During the West Africa Ebola epidemic, he studied how the genome of the Ebola virus evolved as it spread from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone. He has shown that as this virus (which more happily lives in bats) infects more humans, it becomes ever more infectious.Wendy Barclay seeks to understand how viruses are able to jump from animals to humans and why some viruses are so much more dangerous to humans than others. Most Londoners had no idea they were infected during the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. The Bird Flu epidemic in Asia claimed thousands of livesKate Jones is a bat specialist who works on how ecological changes and human behaviour accelerate the spread of animal viruses into humans. Bats have been infected with coronaviruses for more than 10,000 years. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tory Boy: Memoirs of the Last Conservative Ed West (Author) Series:
Edition:
Imprint:
Constable
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Pub Date:
28 Jan 2021
Publishing Status:
Active
Published in: United Kingdom Paperback / softback B-format paperback (Text (eye-readable)) 432pp h196mm x w126mm x s42mm 340g N/A ISBN13: 9781472130815 ISBN13: 978-1-4721-3081-5 ISBN10: 1472130812 EAN: 9781472130815 x Description: 'An entertaining, wide-ranging defence and explanation of the conservative way of seeing the world . . . suffused with generosity and wit' Catholic Herald Brought up by eccentric intellectuals, Ed West experienced what he believed was a fairly normal childhood of political pamphlets as bedtime reading, family holidays to East Germany and a father who was one political step away from advocating the return of serfdom. In his midtwenties, West found himself embracing a mindset usually acquired alongside a realisation that all music post-1955 is garbage, agreeing with everything said in the Telegraph and all the other bad things people get in middle age. This is his journey to becoming a real-life Tory boy.Forgoing the typically tedious and shouty tone of the Right, West provides that rare gem of a conservative book - one that people of any political alignment can read, if only to laugh at West's gallows humour and dry wit. Crammed with self-deprecating anecdotes and enlightening political insights, Tory Boy discloses a life shaped by politics and the realisation that perhaps this obsession does more harm than good. 'Anyone - liberal, conservative, whatever - would enjoy [this book]. It is full of the most fascinating facts, all mixed in with Ed's inimitable displays of self-mockery' Tom Holland 'A self-deprecating and often hilarious memoir of a born conservative watching the world go wrong. Sprinkled with gallows humour, like a political version of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch' The Critic _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________