Yellow fever, black goddess

Yellow Fever, Black Goddess turns the tables on past accounts, focusing not on the microbe hunters but on the microbes themselves, putting these exotic life-forms at center stage, telling their story as they fight to live at the very edge of the possible. Humans acknowledge the existence of our planet's primitive coinhabitants only when they do their worst - emerging to strike down whole populations through rampaging epidemics. But in fact, the protozoa, bacteria, and viruses that cause such diseases as yellow fever and cholera - which is symbolized by the black goddess - lead complex lives in their own right, struggling ever further out on their evolutionary limbs. In order to deal with these microbes we must understand the entire evolutionary environment in which they function - from tropical breeding grounds to the resistant temperate zones, from insect viruses to human plagues - and through this alone can we hope to control them. By giving these organisms their due in this remarkable account, Christopher Wills points the way toward gaining that mastery.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.