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A review by maxstone98
Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis
4.0
I'm not sure the audience for this book, which is about covid and seems from the examples given to have been finished being written in late July. Reading a book in November 2020 about covid written in July 2020? Not enough time had passed since covid appeared to have space and perspective on it. And it was already outdated the moment it came out, as the covid pandemic, and the cultural and social reactions to covid, and the scientific understanding of covid, have continued on since then. And written by a fellow that seems to have more than a full time job battling covid. I couldn't imagine someone picking this up who wasn't really interested in reading about covid, and I couldn't imagine what a person like that would learn that they didn't already know from living through it and reading about it for the last 9 months.
All that said, I liked the author's Blueprint a lot, and I was attracted to the subtitle that he would be saying interesting things about the enduring and ongoing impact of covid which he thought would continue as the disease faded.
It turns out to be better and worse than I thought. The first 80% of the book is about how the covid pandemic evolved, how people reacted to it, and how that compares with past pandemics, including a fair bit of history about past pandemics (although obviously not in as much detail as e.g. The Great Influenza by John Barry), and that part of the book was all a fair amount more interesting and more informative than I expected. Not that I learned many new facts about covid itself, but it put a lot of things in perspective, and was well told. I'm not sure how the author managed to write something that good in such a short time! Still, while better than I expected, it definitely suffered from "what did it describe about covid itself that I didn't already know from the news".
The last 20% actually got around to the "enduring impact" speculations promised in the subtitle, and that wasn't as interesting as I hoped. Partly I think that it showed the age of speculations made in July. And mostly I thought those speculations were not that interesting (e.g. more working from home) or a bit panglossian. I didn't think they were bad guesses for a person guessing about the lasting impact of a pandemic, 4 months into the pandemic (measuring from when it started having a big impact internationally), but still, not as interesting as I hoped.
4 stars because it was well written and I'm impressed by the feat of getting out something this coherant that fast. But still, not exactly sure who the expected audience is.
All that said, I liked the author's Blueprint a lot, and I was attracted to the subtitle that he would be saying interesting things about the enduring and ongoing impact of covid which he thought would continue as the disease faded.
It turns out to be better and worse than I thought. The first 80% of the book is about how the covid pandemic evolved, how people reacted to it, and how that compares with past pandemics, including a fair bit of history about past pandemics (although obviously not in as much detail as e.g. The Great Influenza by John Barry), and that part of the book was all a fair amount more interesting and more informative than I expected. Not that I learned many new facts about covid itself, but it put a lot of things in perspective, and was well told. I'm not sure how the author managed to write something that good in such a short time! Still, while better than I expected, it definitely suffered from "what did it describe about covid itself that I didn't already know from the news".
The last 20% actually got around to the "enduring impact" speculations promised in the subtitle, and that wasn't as interesting as I hoped. Partly I think that it showed the age of speculations made in July. And mostly I thought those speculations were not that interesting (e.g. more working from home) or a bit panglossian. I didn't think they were bad guesses for a person guessing about the lasting impact of a pandemic, 4 months into the pandemic (measuring from when it started having a big impact internationally), but still, not as interesting as I hoped.
4 stars because it was well written and I'm impressed by the feat of getting out something this coherant that fast. But still, not exactly sure who the expected audience is.