Beasts of the Earth

“The authors’ highly informative and well-written book about the animal origins of human diseases will thrill and horrify readers, partly because its tone is so inflammatory and partly because its facts are so startling. Torrey and Yolken do an excellent job addressing the origins of specific diseases...and they offer interesting details about the manifestations of disease in various cultures throughout the world history.”

~Publishers Weekly

"This book brings a very important subject to our attention-the never-ending emergence of new human diseases . . . in every instance defying our predictions, in every instance reminding us of the complexity of our world, in every instance challenging our capacity to prevent and control the threat. . . . The public and its public health experts have a lot to learn here, but Fuller Torrey and Robert Yolken have provided us with a grand primer. If 'the devil is in the details' then at least we can now see some of the manifestations of this devil, and perhaps how we must deal with him."

~Frederick A. Murphy, D.V.M., Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California

"This book is a wonderful combination of very readable scientific and historical underpinnings of past and present epidemics of the spread of diseases from animals to people. This is combined with charming literary glimpses of how these disasters were portrayed at the time."

~Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D., director, Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Washington, D.C.

"A super book . . . this important book provides a novel perspective on the current and future status of human disease. Highly recommended."

~Joanne P. Webster, Ph.D., reader in parasite epidemiology, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, London