| THE FEVER How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years Sonia Shah New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, June 2010 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-312-57301-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10: 0-312-57301-4 | 308pp. | SC | $16.00 | |
| Page 5: | "Climbing into my diminutive white rental car and tossing a baseball cap on top of his backpack in the backseat..." |
| Missing space: S/B "back seat". |
| Page 9: | "Somewhere inside that cold, brittle body lurked entities whose exertions explained the making of rich and poor, sick and healthful." |
| Word choice: S/B "sick and healthy". |
| Page 25: | "...laying their eggs in the new, sunny puddles, which were conveniently as free of fishy, larvae-eating predators as the tree holes of the canopy." |
| Metaphor failure: mosquito larvae don't have to worry about airborne predators. |
| Page 29: | "People mill across its grounds, mostly women wearing traditional wraps and silty blouses..." |
| Spelling: S/B "silky blouses". |
| Page 69: | "Healthful northerners visited the malarious Vatican and the ruins of Rome and professed disgust." |
| Word choice: S/B "Healthy". |
| Page 110: | "But this was just the edge the drug-resistant parasites needed. Its numbers gained on those of its rivals..." |
| Number error: S/B "parasite". |
| Page 123: | "...the people of Chikwawa cut down the trees to turn into charcoal." |
| Just as milk drinkers turn to powder. But seriously, missing word: S/B "to turn them into charcoal". |
| Page 123: | "...puddles filmed over with green scum, from which hatch Anopheles gambiae, bestowing the people of Chikwawa with 170 infected bites every year, and malaria that lasts all year round." 1 |
| Missing words: S/B "170 infected bites per person every year". |
| Page 137: | "(Anopheles gambiae are especially attracted to the smell of human feet.)" |
| Number error: S/B "is". |
| Page 141: | "To broach the building's cavernous underground parking center, your name has to be on a guest list." |
| Word choice: S/B "breach". |
| Page 144: | "From the samples, they isolated ten-micromillimeter-long rods..." |
| Terminology: S/B "ten-nanometer" if my calculations are correct. I don't think they are, because I doubt the microscopes of the 1870s (or any optical microscopes) could resolve structures that small. |
| Page 178: | "To do it, they'd need to secure a healthful population of workers..." |
| Word choice: S/B "healthy". |
| Page 180: | "Aedes aegypti lay its eggs exclusively in artificial containers of water..." |
| Number error: S/B "lays". |
| Page 188: | "Anopheles quadrimaculatus specialize in clear water..." |
| Number error: S/B "specializes". |
| Page 199: | "And he wrangled a spot for his old Brazilian colleague..." |
| Word choice: S/B "wangled". |
| Page 213: | "Tourists have certainly replaced mosquito vectors in Sardinia but the indigenous population remain second-class citizens." |
| Number error: S/B "remains". |
| Page 222: | "With each logarithmic increase in viral load, the probability that an HIV-infected person will transmit the virus during sexual intercourse increases by nearly 250 percent." |
| This should specify the size of the "logarithmic increase". It's meaningless as it stands. |
| Page 234: | "...its authority was both sanctioned by and accountable to the international community, that is, the 193-member nations of the UN." |
| Unwanted hyphen: S/B "193 member nations". (Although it is doubtless true that every nation making up the UN has at least 193 members, that is, citizens.) |
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