The Changing Arctic Landscape by Ken D. Tape. University of Alaska Press, 2010 Photographer Ken D. Tape pairs old and new images of sites in northern Alaska to document the impact of climate change on the Arctic. EXCERPT The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 Every year malaria infects more than 500 million people; every 30 seconds someone dies from it. Journalist Sonia Shah examines the various factors that have allowed the disease to flourish despite scientists’ best efforts to combat it. Where malaria is endemic, many people, Shah says, do not accept that the disease is transmitted solely by mosquitoes, or else they consider it largely benign. Here she describes how Malawi’s dominant ethnic group, the Chewa, view it. “For us, malaria is a disease caused by a protozoan parasite transmitted by mosquito. For the Lake Malombe Chewa, malaria—which the locals call malungo, and lump together with other malaria-like illnesses—is a disease caused by mosquitoes … and spirits and jealousy and hexes and bad weather and hard work and dirty water and rotten food, among other things…. “Like intelligent design and other forms of magical thinking, these beliefs are not unrelated to actual shortcomings in the scientific explanations with which they compete. Every time mosquitoes bit Lake Malombe Chewa and they did not fall ill with malungo, their disbelief in the mosquito theory of malaria transmission strengthened. Ditto for every time they took an antimalarial drug and it failed to work. If the drug didn’t work, this meant that the malungo was not caused by mosquitoes. “What these beliefs mean is that while our malaria is an eminently preventable disease, for the Chewa, as for other rural peoples living traditional lives, it is anything but. Malaria is everywhere, caused by everything…. “It isn’t that the Chewa villagers don’t understand that destroying mosquitoes’ larval habitats, or sleeping under bed nets, or taking prophylactic drugs, or sealing up their houses, helps prevent malaria. And it isn’t that they aren’t interested in preventing malaria…. It is that, as with people everywhere, there’s little interest in fixes that are time-consuming or temporary, or that promise only—in their minds—marginal efficacy. Even if some malungo can be alleviated by people avoiding mosquito bites, they can’t possibly avoid exposure to the weather, or to hard work, or to the envy of their neighbors.” ALSO NOTABLE The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean. Little, Brown, 2010 The Book of Shells: A Life-Size Guide to Identifying and Classifying Six Hundred Seashells by M. G. Harasewych and Fabio Moretzsohn. University of Chicago Press, 2010 Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery by Stephen J. Pyne. Viking, 2010 The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen. HarperCollins, 2010 Here’s Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos. Free Press, 2010 The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution by David Stipp. Current, 2010 Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health by Wenda Trevathan. Oxford University Press, 2010 The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science by Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz. Princeton University Press, 2010
EXCERPT The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
Every year malaria infects more than 500 million people; every 30 seconds someone dies from it. Journalist Sonia Shah examines the various factors that have allowed the disease to flourish despite scientists’ best efforts to combat it. Where malaria is endemic, many people, Shah says, do not accept that the disease is transmitted solely by mosquitoes, or else they consider it largely benign. Here she describes how Malawi’s dominant ethnic group, the Chewa, view it.
“For us, malaria is a disease caused by a protozoan parasite transmitted by mosquito. For the Lake Malombe Chewa, malaria—which the locals call malungo, and lump together with other malaria-like illnesses—is a disease caused by mosquitoes … and spirits and jealousy and hexes and bad weather and hard work and dirty water and rotten food, among other things….
“Like intelligent design and other forms of magical thinking, these beliefs are not unrelated to actual shortcomings in the scientific explanations with which they compete. Every time mosquitoes bit Lake Malombe Chewa and they did not fall ill with malungo, their disbelief in the mosquito theory of malaria transmission strengthened. Ditto for every time they took an antimalarial drug and it failed to work. If the drug didn’t work, this meant that the malungo was not caused by mosquitoes.
“What these beliefs mean is that while our malaria is an eminently preventable disease, for the Chewa, as for other rural peoples living traditional lives, it is anything but. Malaria is everywhere, caused by everything….
“It isn’t that the Chewa villagers don’t understand that destroying mosquitoes’ larval habitats, or sleeping under bed nets, or taking prophylactic drugs, or sealing up their houses, helps prevent malaria. And it isn’t that they aren’t interested in preventing malaria…. It is that, as with people everywhere, there’s little interest in fixes that are time-consuming or temporary, or that promise only—in their minds—marginal efficacy. Even if some malungo can be alleviated by people avoiding mosquito bites, they can’t possibly avoid exposure to the weather, or to hard work, or to the envy of their neighbors.”
ALSO NOTABLE The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean. Little, Brown, 2010
The Book of Shells: A Life-Size Guide to Identifying and Classifying Six Hundred Seashells by M. G. Harasewych and Fabio Moretzsohn. University of Chicago Press, 2010
Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery by Stephen J. Pyne. Viking, 2010
The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen. HarperCollins, 2010
Here’s Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion through the Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos. Free Press, 2010
The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
The Youth Pill: Scientists at the Brink of an Anti-Aging Revolution by David Stipp. Current, 2010
Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health by Wenda Trevathan. Oxford University Press, 2010
The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science by Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz. Princeton University Press, 2010
