Alfred Fitzgerald

I found this book fascinating and terrifying. I was fascinated as I learned of people with dedication and inventive skills who led through a landscape in some ways is a bizarre duplication of the Middle Ages, entrenched in the "Oh, we know how to resolve a pandemic and it's not going to happen anyway" attitude. I was terrified to learn how easily those unsung heroes of a historically accurate story could have been pushed aside. While the people we counted on to save us looked for more popular solutions we waited impatiently for a silver bullet in a syringe. At the same time there was a set of strategies which promised to save large numbers of us available and not fully understood. If we had known some of the factors that Michael Lewis explicates so clearly, our minds could have traversed the no man's land of politicizing to see how common sense, backed by hands on experience, would have weakened the resistance to the health measures proposed. The manner in which Mr. Lewis sets forth in, for the most part, the story of pioneers with a new approach to dealing with such problems is a revelation. We have other forms of pandemic very much alive in our country. The methodology of this new breed of researchers and innovators needs to be popularized and Lewis obviously has the skill to tell their stories with candor and even with some welcome humor. When I began writing this review my motive was to promote the book becoming a movie. Before I pressed "Enter" I did a online search and learned that The Premonition screen rights have been purchased and the film is planned. My work here is done! AL