The author has had a storied career as a magazine editor, most notably as editor in chief of Esquire and the managing editor of Sports Illustrated. Those were the glory days of magazines, and Terry McDonell brilliantly captured his professional career and his colleagues in prose (among them George Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson) in The Accidental Life. He digs much deeper into his life in Irma, the story of his mother and his life with a single mom. (His dad died in a plane crash when McDonell was five months old.) He had a stepfather from hell, a romantic life out of Henry Miller, and an infatuation with the writing style, if not the lifestyle, of Ernest Hemingway. McDonell is a poet at heart (in fact, he has published a wonderful collection called Wyoming: The Lost Poems), and I can think of no higher compliment than to say Irma deserves its place on the bookshelf next to This Boy’s Life, by Tobias Wolff, a superb memoir with the best dedication ever: “My first stepfather used to say that what I didn’t know would fill a book. Well, here it is.”
Some feel history is made by great men, others feel it is made by the common man, but Jonathan Kennedy argues persuasively that history, ultimately, is made by germs. In this wonderfully written survey of eight major outbreaks of infectious disease, the author shows how much the modern world has been shaped by bacteria and viruses, whether it be dooming the Neanderthals, spreading Christianity, or turbocharging the Industrial Revolution. He is especially sobering about what next may await us, thanks to antibiotics, whose success has produced bacteria that are increasingly resistant to the available cures. Enlightened governments working in concert to improve health care around the world offer the best hope against the next pandemic. If you scoff, then you better stock up at Trader Joe’s and get a lifetime Netflix subscription.
