soaphia's review against another edition
3.0
A good book that is useful if you have no/little prior knowledge on viruses and their inner workings. If you do have a previous education about viruses though, it doesn't add much information beyond what you'll already be aware of.
elentarri's review
informative
medium-paced
3.75
Virusphere is an introductory text to viruses - the diseases they cause and how they cause these diseases, their evolution, how they "live", how they influence the evolution of other species by messing around with other genomes, and how viruses form part of the Earth's ecosystem. This book starts off by providing a broad survey of a variety of the more common viral diseases ( e.g. measles, flu, cancer viruses etc), as well as the ones generally covered in other disease books such as insect-borne viruses, small pox and HIV/AIDS. I found the second half of the book more interesting as it covers giant viruses (mimiviruses), viral abundance everywhere including Antarctica, how viruses prey on bacteria, virus-wasp symbiosis, and how viruses alter the genomes of other species and influence that species evolution (e.g. retroviral genes in mammal genomes make it possible for placentas to develop properly - no virus, no mammals!). The chapter on the various hypotheses of viral evolution was also particularly interesting.
This is an interesting, informative and short overview of nearly everything virus, written in an engaging and intelligible manner.
This is an interesting, informative and short overview of nearly everything virus, written in an engaging and intelligible manner.
More...