Simon Schama. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. 2023
Tim Cook. Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. 2015
Simon Schama. Rembrandt’s Eyes. 1999
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next HumanPandemic. 2012
Simon Schama. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. 2023
This appeared, at first, to be a Covid book, written, I suspect, in white-hot fury at the stupidity we humans displayed before, during and after the pandemic. It is about drinking bleach and taking Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. It is about not wearing masks as a statement of freedom (and often dying) and it is about the Republican war on science (although Schama never mentions political parties) and the relentless hatred for and pursuit of Anthony Fauci. And I would have passed on it because of a sincere desire to leave behind that era of stupidity and anger, except that it is by Simon Schama.
There are a lot of bad historians out there in the world of the written word. Some can get so bogged down in the details or the theories that you find yourself, as a reader, wondering what the book is actually about. Others are so fact and date oriented that you have to wonder at their private emotional lives. These are the ones that have truly given history a bad name. And then there are the greats – the ones who can give the facts clearly, elucidate the meanings and forces behind them and have endlessly fascinating stories to tell that never bore and always enrich. Usually they are women like Barbara Tuchman (still the best, in my estimation), Antonia Fraser and Mary Beard. And then there is Mr. Schama.
I encountered Simon Schama relatively late and so I still have a number of his books to look forward to. My first was his history of the French Revolution and it was a revelation. Finally, the whole chaotic jumble made sense and I was hooked. So, when I saw Foreign Bodies, I was hooked and read it – and although it deals with Covid it is much more about the history of inoculation and some great historical figures that I was not aware of and how they were treated.
I expected him to start with Jenner and cowpox but he only mentions Jenner on p. 401 and only to point out that he was not the first to use cowpox to inoculate against smallpox and it didn’t matter because no one took any notice any way. The real hero in the smallpox story – a disease that killed, disfigured and blinded multitudes with brutal efficiency – was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She, the great beauty of her time, had been disfigured by the disease and, while staying in Istanbul, discovered that the local people (particularly the Circassian people) vaccinated from active cases of smallpox with great effectiveness. She had the procedure performed on her young son and then went on to promote the procedure throughout England. Her ideas were not well received – too foreign, too Turkish, too barbarian, too Islamic. Schama points out that there is strong evidence that older cultures in Wales and Highland Scotland had been practicing the live inoculation procedure for centuries. But the English considered those people savages as well.
We have a tendency of thinking of the plague – The Black Death, the Bubonic Plague – as strictly late Medieval. It was, but that was not the end of it. In 1720-2 southern France, around Marseille had an outbreak that killed half the population – about 100,000 people. In the 1770’s there was a bad outbreak in Sweden and a few years later about a quarter of a million died of it in Russia. The European reaction was typically schizophrenic. They knew that the origins of the disease were in the east (particularly in India where it had never gone away) and that increased trade carried the disease – it was not known until the end of the 19th century that it moved in the fleas that lived on the blood of rats but were not particular about consuming human blood. But they opposed any restrictions on trade and even quarantines (they slowed down business profits). Besides, no one country could control any trade other than their own.
I was familiar with the works of Marcel Proust – marvelous– but I was unaware that his father Adrien was a doctor who had a keen interest in the particular problem of pandemics. Adrien Proust gave his career and his prestige (which was, apparently, enormous) to this problem and could be considered the godfather of the WHO (the same one that Trump is trying to destroy). It probably caused his death from exhaustion and stroke.
Finally, we come to the heart of the book. Here we find a man that I have never heard of and yet he probably saved more lives from epidemic disease (certainly from the plague) than any one else in history: Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine.
Haffkine discovered the bacteria (yersinia pestis) that caused the plague, developed a vaccine for it (which he tested first on himself), developed a way to create large amounts of the vaccine – in the field – and then went to India and began to save lives, despite opposition from the authorities (the Raj) and most other scientists. He vaccinated in person and trained other people to do it as well. Eventually there was an accident involving tetanus (he was not, himself, present) and he was fired and kicked out of India. There have always been and will always be the idiotic ant-vaxxers.
As Schama says in his conclusion:
Something about inoculators, vaccinators, epidemiologists gets under the skin of public tribunes for whom nothing, certainly not epidemiology, is politics-free. Their fury swells into maddened vehemence to the point where it becomes commonplace to wish inoculators banished, imprisoned or dead.
The Anthony Faucis of this world.
p.390
In the end, there are some very clear lessons to be learned – which we will not learn, apparently. The old diseases are never totally be extinguished. They will always live on in some dark corner of the world: smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, plague. As we lose our vigilance (often through either religious mania or parasitic influencers who sell our health for gain) these diseases will triumphantly return and kill. The new diseases, constantly mutating, will be transmitted to us zoonotically(from wild and semi-domesticated animals) as we persistently force ourselves into their world in search of profits. These diseases – like the various forms of SARS – will be upon us before we are prepared and will, like Covid, take a terrible toll. We can only prevent them by research and the discipline of herd inoculation. Unfortunately, we cannot vaccinate against stupidity and greed.
Tim Cook. Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. 2015
I am going to do a quick review of Tim Cook’s Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945. Vol 2. which I have just finished. I am preparing a trip in the early spring to see some of the World War I battlefields, and then on to Belgium and Amsterdam to see some Van Eyck, Vermeer and Rembrandt. Since I will (coincidentally) be in Holland for May 5,Liberation Day, and that liberation was accomplished by the Canadian Army, I thought it would be a good idea to refresh my memory of the events. Not to mention that my father flew a Lancaster for the RCAF in the same war. So, some close associations.
I also wanted to pay tribute to the work of our premier war historian who, very sadly, died on October 25, 2025 at the young age of 53 of Hodgkin’s disease. This was an irreparable loss to the world of Canadian War History. I can unequivocally recommend his two-volume history of Canada in the Great War: At the Sharp End and Shock Troops. Combined, it is the best history of the First World War from the Canadian perspective ever written.
As far as Fight to the Finish: Canadians in the Second World War 1944-1945 is concerned, it is equally as enthralling as the other three books listed below. Cook is not afraid to criticize or praise where he sees fit. Some rather forgotten generals come in for approbation and some well-known ones – particularly American ones – get properly taken down; particularly Mark Clarke who semi-botched Anzio and then rushed to seize Rome (and the headlines)while allowing a German army to escape encirclement. Montgomery, as well, takes a few hits from Cook. Sometimes generals prefer the front page to the front line.
The book’s strongest asset is it’s focus on D-Day in the first half. Using Hollywood as its cudgel, the USA has beaten it into the head of the Western World that D-Day was American and it simply was not; notwithstanding Private Ryan and The Longest Day. The Americans were, at the most, one third of the force landing on the beaches and almost none of the delivering and supporting navy. The men from Canada on Juno beach went through all the hell portrayed on film and penetrated the farthest inland of any force on day one, and that deserves to be remembered.
There are two other things that the book is important for dealing with. One is the (I hope) final settlement of the troubling question of whether the mass bombing of German cities significantly contributed to war effort or was merely a revenge slaughter. Cook spends (in both volumes) a considerable time on the air war and his final conclusion is that the bombing was a major contributor, if only in the way it drew weapons and personnel away from the front (particularly the eastern front) to protect the German cities. In away, the bombing raids constituted the “Second Front” that Stalin demanded so stridently.
The other matter was the afore-mentioned liberation of the Netherlands. Holland was the last country to be liberated from the Nazis (I don’t count Austria) and the people there were – literally – starving. Technically, they were surviving on 500 calories a day, but in fact (unless they could access the Black Market – and few could) they were getting even less than 500 calories. The Canadian army freed them and then fed them – often with their own rations. And they are remembered for it to this day. Happy May 5!
Also:
Tim Cook. The Necessary War: Canadians Fighting the Second World War 1939-1943 Vol. 1. 2014
Tim Cook. At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914-1916. Vol 1. 2007
Tim Cook. Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War1917-1918. Vol. 2. 2008
This section of short reviews has been interrupted recently by a trip to Europe. I have been visiting the WW1 battlefields where Canadians fought: Ypres, Mount Sorrel, the Somme (the September offensive at Courcelette),Vimy, Ypres again and Passchendaele. The hundred days was much more mobile so there is less to see. I also visited Beaumont-Hamel although that is, strictly speaking, a Newfoundland battlefield and monument. We attended the last post ceremony at the Meiningen gate in Ypres and then moved on the city of Ghent in Belgium. There we saw the Van Eyck altarpiece, the second most famous painting in the world – and the most stolen. Ghent itself is an amazing city that was at it’s height (in the 15th century) the second largest city in Europe after Paris. After that we moved on to Amsterdam which we managed to visit on it’s liberation day – that liberation from the Nazis being achieved by theCanadian army. Five minutes walk from each other are the Rijksmuseum (home to Rembrandt and some Vermeer) and the Van Gogh museum.
Although we were following our own agenda – the battlefields of the first world war and the then some great architecture and art including the altarpiece and the Night Watch – we were, in fact following the history of the wool trade. In France we stayed in Arras, where medieval tapestry reached its pinnacle. Tapestries from there became synonymous with the city’s name; and so Hamlet stabs Polonius when he is hiding behind the “arras”. From there the trade centre moved to Ghent in the 16th century creating great wealth and then, with the liberation of the low countries from the yoke of Spain, it moved to Amsterdam. These are all beautiful cities that have seen much destruction and oppression during two world wars. Our last day was spent on themagnificent canals of Amsterdam and in the hiding place of Anne Frank. I am not a travel writer – and believe me there are some great ones to read from Rebecca West to Ryszard Kapuscinski to Paul Theroux to Bruce Chatwin – but I would urge you to see, at least, Vimy, Ghent and Amsterdam.
Simon Schama. Rembrandt’s Eyes. 1999
Although this book was published in 1999 and I’ve owned a copy since 2018, I waited until this year to read it even though I am a great fan of Simon Schama’s work. I could partially lie and say that I have been waiting for the appropriate moment to tackle the book but, undeniably the sheer immensity of it has alwaysbeen a bit frightening. But this winter, looking forward to an April trip to Europe that would include a visit to the Rijksmuseum with “The Night Watch” and lots more Rembrandt, I could no longer find any excuse to delay. The book is an immense journey but worth every minute. I will not try to summarize except tosay that everything is covered that could possibly be considered concerning Rembrandt, his life, his milieu and his work.
In a sense,it is a companion piece to Schama’s Embarrassment of Riches (reviewed last year) although the focus is temporally narrower. In order to set Rembrandt’s work within the context of his contemporaries, there is what would be considered elsewhere as a full-length study of Peter Paul Rubens that would be a treat on its own. But Schama is more than just a great historian – he has some real insights to offer into Rembrandt’s style, thinking and innovation. And behind it all is a true affection for the often spiky and idiosyncratic painter.
But Schama’s real ability is as a story-teller. Rather than describe a cultural phenomenon or movement he choses a story about an individual that graphically illustrates what he is trying to say and fascinates the reader at the same time. Books about artists can be extremely didactic and tedious. This one is unbelievably full of life. Read it.
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. 2012
Please note the date of publication, because in addition to other things Mr. Quammen predicted the NBO (the Next Big One) to be a zoonotic infection and his money was on an influenza like Covid-Sars. And seven years later we got exactly that.
This is one of those classics of science writing (like Paul de Kruif’s The Microbe Hunters) that absolutely every one should read. Vax deniers should be forced to read these books even under duress. Quammen clarifies how pandemics work and what zoonotic spillovers are – and that’s important because that’s where our future health issues lie. For example, our current raging Ebola outbreak in the Congo. He says:
A zoonosis is an animal infection transmissible to humans. There are more such diseases than you might expect. AIDS is one. Influenza is a whole category of others. Pondering them as a group tends to reaffirm the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected withother animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health. p. 14 (my emphasis)
Other zoonotic diseases are rabies, Hanta virus (remember the cruise ship?), Hendra and the Bubonic plague – the list goes on. Aside from the plague, and possibly rabies, most of these are relatively recent. The live in animal hosts, without killing them until they find a way (often by mutation) to make the jump to humans – sometimes through another animal type. And then they start killing. Quammen again:
Ebola is a zoonosis. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its ultimate source in a wild aquatic bird and, after passing through some combination of domesticated animals (a duck in southern China, a sow in Iowa?) emerged to kill as many as 50 million people before receding into obscurity. All of the human influenzas are zoonoses. So are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nilefever, Marburg virus disease, rabies, hanta virus pulmonary syndrome, anthrax, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, ocular larva migrans, scrub typhus, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Kyasanur forest disease, and a strange new affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each ofthem reflects the action of a pathogen that can cross into people from other animals. P.21
Please don’t make the mistake in thinking that these are all old diseases that we are only figuring out right now. They are (with a few exceptions like the Bubonic Plague) new diseases for us humans that have lived long in animals that we have avoided because we have avoided the animals. But now we are pressing on the animal world everywhere and with unrelenting force.As Quammen says: “If you shake the trees, something will fall out.”
To put the matter in its starkest form: Human-caused ecological pressures and disruptions are bringing animal pathogens ever more into contact with human populations, while human technology and behavior are spreading those pathogens ever more widely and quickly. There are three elements to the situation.
One: Mankind’s activities are causing the disintegration (a word chosen carefully) of natural ecosystems at a cataclysmic rate. …
Two: Those millions of unknown creatures include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protists, andother organisms, many of which are parasitic. …
Three: But now the disruption of natural ecosystems seems more and more to be unloosing such microbes into a wider world. P.40-1
And we provide excellent transmission routes with airlines, cruise ships, trains and cars. Diseases don’t have to walk in us any farther than the nearest airport. And then they are loose in the world.
These are the bare bones of the book. For the story in detail, you have to read it yourself and Quammen is an excellent sleuth and a brilliant story-teller. Just his account of the origins of AIDS (he traces it back to 1908) is extraordinary. At the risk of sounding excessive, this may be the most important book of our time – especially after living through Covid and hearing all the non-scientific bullshit that is still being bandied about by “influencers”; some of whom are in high political office.
