Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

David Quammen briefly worked as a novelist before transitioning to nonfiction work. He is now a science writer who began his career at Outside Magazine and has worked for many years at National Geographic. Quammen is also the author of The Song of the Dodo, a work on island biogeography, Monster of God, a work on large predators, and The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, devoted to Darwin’s life and the theory of evolution between his first discovery and the publication of The Origin of Species. 

In addition to his close reading of historical and academic literature for Spillover, Quammen visited many of the locations that were epicenters of major zoonotic outbreaks and observed researchers conducting their fieldwork. He is engaged with making complex science intelligible to his audience and is especially focused on recognizing dedicated experts and their role in elucidating outbreaks. He also seeks to explain what zoonotic disease is and to convey that every person has some responsibility to understand it and respond to it with forethought and care rather than panic. 

Field is an Australian who originally trained as a veterinarian and went on to get a doctorate in ecology. He abandoned his original dissertation to study the then-new