Reading: Two book comments

I've recently finished reading two excellent books. Here are my comments on them.

Here's the latest once I just finished reading.

The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by Jake Tapper

This is an excellent non-fiction book, thoroughly researched. Though it focuses on only one small area of Afghanistan, it gives a brilliant insight into what many American troops have and are experiencing, a microcosm of what's taking place in various forms throughout that country.

Often you're with the individual soldiers and units as they're waging combat, fighting for their lives, experiencing their emotions. While at other times, you're one or two levels above them, with the officers making decisions and planning operations.

This is a thick book, but it's so engrossing that's it's a fast read. It's a page turner.

After finishing this book, I came away with three distinct impressions:

1) Our troops are doing an admirable job under "very trying circumstances." I hadn't been aware of the difficulties they were fighting under.

2) Though this war "may" have been winnable initially, that's no longer an option. The Bush administration squandered that opportunity when they diverted most military resources to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

3) If the war isn't winnable, where does that leave us? Our military is exhausted, having been in constant combat since around 2002.

Note: Since this book covers a few years in the life of this outpost, the names of the soldiers, places and units are constantly changing: new units rotate in and soldiers rename places after fallen comrades. This occasionally makes it a little difficult to remember who's who and what's what.

I highly recommend this book. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Here's the other book I recently (a couple of weeks ago) finished reading, another thick one.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

This was an entertaining as well as an educational read. Though non-fiction, the author kept me riveted to turning the pages. I was never bored.

Before reading this book, my knowledge of zoonotic diseases—a term for diseases that come from animals—was somewhat limited. I now realize they comprise the bulk of viruses that adversely impact humans today. A common zoonotic disease we're all familiar with is influenza. And of course, there's also AIDS, Ebola, Lyme, SARS and so on and so forth.

The book delves into the research by scientists of various disciplines as they go about their work. Roughly, the approach used is as follows:

First, they have to determine there is disease. Second, they have to determine what type of disease (bacteria or virus). Third, they have to determine if it's a new virus, an old familiar virus or a mutated virus. Fourth, they have to locate the animal/s behind the outbreak (apes, bats, mosquitoes, rats, ticks, et cetera). Fifth, they have to discover the reservoir where the virus hides between outbreaks—and it's not necessarily in the same animal that causes the disease.

My one complaint about the book concerns a short imaginary story (the only one in the book) about how the AIDS virus might have escaped its wild origins and made it to the Belgian capitol of the Congo. The story was unnecessary. Elsewhere, the author leaves it up to your imagination to fill in the blanks.

This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.