Book Club! In Short Reviews.
Book Club! In Short Reviews is Hummingbird’s new book review series. We say “Book Club” because we really want to get a conversation going if you are so inclined! Please feel free to comment in the “Comments” section below the byline or by clicking here and sending it to us. We will repost the review with your comments. We are trying this shortened format because we know everyone is so busy—with their “usual” life and then pandemic life piled on top! We are only posting recommended reads. Let us know what you think. All reviews are by Hummingbird contributors.
The Premonition
by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is a master of telling people’s stories and weaving them into the larger story.
The Premonition is about those who foretold the COVID 19 pandemic. He tells the story of several iconoclasts who tried to prevent the spread of the virus and save the country during this pandemic. It is a deeply disturbing story. Why? Because in telling this story, he tells us how ineffective our public safety organizations are. In particular, the CDC is portrayed as an arrogant, academic institution with little regard for the public it serves. Lewis’s mavericks were only able to get a low-level CDC employee who volunteered to help them in her spare time (lest she be caught by her bosses in the CDC). While the media (and me too) are quick to blame Trump; they miss that the institutions created to save us are merely bureaucracies. So the story is told from the view of those who chose to work outside of their institutions and how they tried to help: Laura Glass’s middle school science project that mapped the true course a pandemic would take; Charity Dean, a public health doctor in California who tried to prevent the spread of the virus; Carter Meecher, a doctor with the VA who recognized the need to close schools early; and Joe DeRisi, PhD, a genius who created an underutilized testing lab of volunteers when the CDC failed to produce sufficient and accurate tests for COVID 19. When our institutions refused to help us, supporting Trump’s dismissive philosophy that this would “go away”; these and other mavericks tried to step in; and that is the only solace that I can find…the United States will always be a place for mavericks who want to do good.
Review by Angela Rieck.
