tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Richard Horton
The Guardian, Thursday 15 November 2012 08.00 GMT
Since 1971, Davos has been the playground of the rich and powerful, a small Swiss resort that once a year hosts a glittering party for hypertrophied egos and atrophied minds. But in the 1920s Davos was the luxurious destination for a different category of the wealthy ? those suffering from tuberculosis. I wonder if Klaus Schwab chose Davos for gatherings of his World Economic Forum with a deliberately ironic eye: a place where those who come to pay homage to their global self-importance dance unknowingly on the graves of their prematurely deceased forebears.
Helen Bynum has written a book not only full of diverting asides but also of urgent importance. Her project began as a biography of a disease. This task she discharges perfectly well. She writes concisely, covering 35,000 years of an infectious condition that has left a strong literary as well as scientific footprint (she begins with George Orwell and ends with John le Carr?).
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/spitting-blood-helen-bynum-review
The Guardian, Thursday 15 November 2012 08.00 GMT
Since 1971, Davos has been the playground of the rich and powerful, a small Swiss resort that once a year hosts a glittering party for hypertrophied egos and atrophied minds. But in the 1920s Davos was the luxurious destination for a different category of the wealthy ? those suffering from tuberculosis. I wonder if Klaus Schwab chose Davos for gatherings of his World Economic Forum with a deliberately ironic eye: a place where those who come to pay homage to their global self-importance dance unknowingly on the graves of their prematurely deceased forebears.
Helen Bynum has written a book not only full of diverting asides but also of urgent importance. Her project began as a biography of a disease. This task she discharges perfectly well. She writes concisely, covering 35,000 years of an infectious condition that has left a strong literary as well as scientific footprint (she begins with George Orwell and ends with John le Carr?).
...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/15/spitting-blood-helen-bynum-review