Book of the week: The Premonition by Michael Lewis

Lewis once again turns a complex subject into ‘a fluid intellectual thriller’

A technician demonstrating how to inject a nucleic acid sample onto a disk for analysis, in a lab
(Image credit: GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)

In October 2019, health security experts published the Global Health Security Index, a list of countries best placed to deal with a pandemic. The US was number one. So why have more than 600,000 of its citizens died from Covid-19? The answer, said Steven Poole in The Daily Telegraph, is that although the US had a plan, no one dared use it until it was too late.

This is the tragedy explored by Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker and The Big Short, who once again turns a complex subject into “a fluid intellectual thriller”. Packed with fascinating facts and personal angles, The Premonition follows a gang of maverick scientists who designed a detailed response to an imagined outbreak – only to find it ignored at the critical moment.Trump’s “cabal of know-nothing cronies” were partly to blame, but Lewis reserves his real fury for the obtuse scientific bureaucrats who were perpetually demanding more evidence.

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