THE STATE OF DISBELIEF
JULIET ROSENFELD Short Books, 192pp, £12.99
Why don’t we talk about death was the question posed by the psychoanalyst Juliet Rosenfeld after her husband of seven months died of lung cancer. She wrote this book, she tells us, to celebrate her love for him but also to explore how to talk about bereavement. Juliet was 46 when she met Andrew, her second husband, and he was only 52. A rich and successful property developer, he was unaccustomed to giving in, even as his cancer proved to be inoperable.
In an interview with Rosenfeld in the Times, Louise France observed: ‘What is striking – and perhaps made Juliet’s subsequent grief all the more messy and incomprehensible – was Andrew’s refusal to admit what might happen. She allowed herself to cry just once in front of him over those 13 months. “He found my getting upset unbearable. The power of his denial was so strong. Somehow I really capitulated with that. I was complicit with him.”’
In the Daily Mail, Helen Brown noted that the Rosenfelds ‘feel, to some degree, insulated from the mortality afflicting the rest of us. Him by his wealth and optimism, her by what she assumed was a deeper understanding of the human heart. She is laudably frank about her failure to “manage” her grief as she had anticipated.’ Brown concluded: ‘I hope she doesn’t adhere to Andrew’s instructions that she remain single forever.’ But Beth Guilding in the TLS wasn’t sure that the book quite worked: ‘The descriptions of Andrew, the power of their love, how handsome, orderly, logical and private he was, become saccharine.’
Publishers have been nimble in producing books about the Covid-19 pandemic or about pandemics in general. Some had already been scheduled, while others had not been conceived before lockdown began.
‘Now, with perfect timing, a good guide has arrived to pull together scientific knowledge about the way things spread and how to block (or encourage) their transmission,’ wrote Clive Cookson in his Financial Times review of The Rules of Contagion: Why Things Spread and Why They Stop by Adam Kucharski (Wellcome Collection, 352pp, £16.99). It ‘prepares the ground comprehensively for readers to make sense of what is happening today, by distilling the wisdom gathered by studying previous epidemics over more than a century’. Guardian reviewer Laura Spinney, herself the author of an earlier book about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, focused on the book’s hero, Ronald Ross, ‘the British doctor who in the late 19th century discovered that mosquitoes spread malaria and was rewarded with the 1902 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine... Ross wasn’t the first to describe an epidemic mathematically, but he was the first to do so armed with a thorough understanding of the biological and social processes that shape it, and this made all the difference.’ The book examines ‘the things that are common to all pandemics – from the ice bucket challenge to bitcoin to infectious diseases – rather than those that are peculiar to each one’ and ‘one of the most interesting and topical parts of the book is about the mathematical modelling of fake news’.
As Meera Senthilingam states in her ‘compelling overview’ Outbreaks and Epidemics: Battling Infection from Measles to Coronavirus (Icon, 176pp, £8.99), ‘every outbreak... has a unique source’, wrote Adrian Woolfson in the Spectator. What is more, ‘old enemies can come back. As global warming takes effect, the exposure of human and animal corpses previously locked into the Siberian permafrost raises the possibility of the resurgence of deadly diseases such as anthrax and smallpox’.
According to New York Times reviewer Carl Zimmer, some of the scenes in The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum (C Hurst, 392pp, £20) ‘were so vivid they had me drafting movie treatments in my head’. Honigsbaum analyses nine stories of past pandemics, including the 1930 parrot fever outbreak and the 2014-15 West Africa Ebola outbreak. ‘Whether familiar or forgotten, parrot fever or Ebola, he finds striking similarities among them. And those similarities ought to make us worried about the next outbreak. If history is any guide, things may not go well.’ Zimmer was doubtful whether we should call the last 100 years ‘The Pandemic Century’, however. ‘What made this past century unusual was not pandemics per se, but our expectations about beating them.’
The Italian novelist Paolo Giordano, who has a PHD in theoretical physics, began writing How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 80pp, £2.99) on 29th February and finished it on 4th March. It is ‘part analysis, part journal, perhaps the first from the new world we all share’, wrote
‘What made this past century unusual was not pandemics per se, but our expectations about beating them’
David Sexton in the Evening Standard. ‘It is modest, lucid, calm, informed, directly helpful in trying to think about where we are now.’ In Together: Loneliness, Health and What Happens When We Find Connection (Wellcome Collection, 352pp, £20), the former US surgeon general Vivek Murthy ‘provides a compassionate and thought-provoking exposition of the loneliness pandemic that runs “like a dark thread”, disguised as a host of other pathologies such as addiction, obesity, violence, anxiety and depression’, wrote Adrian Woolfson in the Spectator. ‘The fractured structures of modern societies are fertile breeding grounds for this unforgiving malady.’ Although much of the research in the book is not new, wrote Christina Patterson in the Times, Murthy ‘marshals it with great eloquence and clarity, and illustrates it with stories and interviews that bring it alive. What shines through most of all is the humanity... as we all struggle to find new ways to connect, we are starting to see what we also see in this inspirational book: the radical, transformative, creative power of compassion and hope.’
To what extent is a monetary value placed on a human life? That is the central question posed in Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life by Howard Steven Friedman (University of California Press, 204pp, £23). ‘The answers that society gives are often unfair and irrational,’ wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond in his endorsement for the book. ‘But our justice system, environmental regulations, product safety, life insurance, health care, and abortion decisions demand answers. This gripping book is essential reading on a topic that you’d like to avoid but can’t.’
Joshua Gans, a professor of strategic management, wrote Economics in the Age of Covid-19 (MIT Press, Kindle edition, 132pp, c.£7.81) and had it peer-reviewed in less than a month. It is 40,000 words long and most of the citations are from March and April 2020. The first four chapters look at the economics of shutdown and especially the risks of not shutting down; the later chapters look at possible solutions. The author will update the book continually until its hardback publication in November.