Pandemonium: Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease, and Other Biological Plagues of the 2st Century.

Liz Dennett is a public service librarian in the Science and Technology
Library at the University of Alberta.

Pandemonium is a terrifying and all-too-real treatise on the “biological bombs” that result from globalization and the movement of people and animals. It details how current biological invaders, such as Lyme disease (an infectious disease caused by at least three species of borrelia bacteria), avian flu (a highly communicable severe respiratory disease), MRSA (an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus bacterium), and mad cow disease (a disease in the brain of cattle that can infect humans) among others, are all successful in our increasingly homogenous world thanks to industrialization, travel, and loss of animal habitat and diversity.

Reading about plague after plague in this book will fill the most hardened reader with despair about the state of our planet. The final chapter on the likely occurrence of a deadly flu pandemic is particularly horrifying. The only things worse are some of the “helpful” suggestions that the author offers. Along with straightforward ones like eating locally and avoiding hospitals, he suggests we should be prepared for mass die-offs! While it would be nice to accuse the author of fear mongering and move on, these pandemics have already occurred many times in the past and will likely again. The flu of 1918–19 killed more than 50 million people around the world. Nikiforuk feels we are no better prepared to face a disaster of this size now. The book is well researched, with key sources referenced. Without a doubt, it is an important book to read in our turbulent times.