Rating: 
Summary: Pick it up until you put it down.
Review: Garrett was amazing in relaying all the relevant facts to the increasingly destabilizing realm of global public health. As you read, you can actually generate a picture of your own of all the problems and statistics compounding upon one another until at the end...well, we'll see. Definitely worth the time to read. Annotated to the fullest for anything that you could possibly want to consider or research for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: I've been talking about it and noweveryone wants to read it
Review: Here are a few cautions about the book:The book is 550 pages with 230 pages of footnotes. I note this because sometimes, including this time, I order a book without looking at how many pages it is. This one was a surprise for me when I opened the box from Amazon. The print is very small. I had to go out and buy magnifying glasses. It was either that or use arm extensions. I am very old though. The footnotes are even smaller, and the numbers of the footnotes are impossibly small. You don't have to read all of the footnotes. Some of them are just ibid's and idem's. But there is more interesting detail in some of them. By quoting similar statistics about the same issue in the same paragraph, she seems to contradict herself until you figure it out and can move on, slowing down your pace. Note the "old" reference above...it may simply be me. Other than that I found the book very interesting. As I talked about it with others, many asked to "borrow" it after I completed it. I find this a little bothersome sometimes, don't you? You get the book back about half the time. The chapters on Russia and America were the most interesting. The ones on Kitwik and India were the least. By far, the Russian chapter was the scariest. Had I read this book before going there last year I might not have gone. DON'T DRINK THE WATER, including ice cubes (giardia). I never drink water when I'm in another country. I find it safest to stick with beer, and bottled water to brush my teeth. Anyway, this was her best chapter by far (it's very long) giving a more human element than any other chapter and far more interesting detail about everyday life for some. It was the chapter that made me want to send money to someone, especially that woman and her ill son. Sometimes I just have to put myself between children and odds bigger than they. It's the father instinct in me. The book was written before 9/11 and I kept wondering, when reading the American chapter, what difference that would have made in her narrative. Oh, and I'll never doubt soldiers who complain of things like Gulf War Syndome again. Remember when local health departments tested you for TB and other things before you could get a food handler's permit to be a waiter or a meat cutter or whatever, and they'd also trace one's sexual partners when one got treated for a sexually transmitted disease (note "old" reference once again)? They don't do that anymore. Our health department doesn't even care. I called them yesterday and asked them if I had an STD (not much chance of that anymore) should I tell all my sexual partners or would they. The answers? "Naw" and "NO." That's interesting, isn't it? One, it suggests that the author is correct in that the government is betraying us in matters of public health. Two, it suggests that I have way too much time on my hands.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Reporter Writes a Monumental Book
Review: I am the editor of Laurie Garrett's profound and meticulously researched book and I'm glad so many found the book important and even fascinating. Laurie is one of the hardest working people I have ever had the privilege to work with. She would rather stay up all night to get one fact just right than to get even a minor point wrong. It is therefore very difficult to see the critiques of the book on Amazon, mainly because I know how hard she, and I right along with her, tried to get everthing right. The task was daunting, but Laurie never shrank from the challenge. She knew there would be readers and others who would disagree with much of her premise so strongly that they would attack her book, and her reporting. Where readers have legitimately found errors, we are grateful. However, what I hope is that the book's message is not so threatening to others that they must find fault with a superb reporter's hard work. I believe that what Laurie tackles in her book is nothing short of the most important issue of our time, and she does so with an unflinching eye (and pen). We did do a lot of cutting in the final editing stages of the book, and if that cutting resulted in any problems with structure or fact, I apologize to the reader. But we wanted as many readers as possible to read the book, and we didn't want its size to be any more intimidating than it had to be. We attempted to make the cuts with grace and precision, but that wasn't always achieved, even though my belief, after many visits to this book, is that it is a masterpiece. I am extremely proud to be its publisher.
Rating:
Summary: The world is sliding into medical and social chaos...
Review: I am torn with this book. If rating a book is based merely upon delivery of information, on correct grammar and no typographical errors by the author or the publisher, or on other mundane things that go into the making of a great book, then this book may have deserved a four star ranking or less. But if a book's rating is on the importance of the information within its covers to the world at large, then this book deserves higher then a five star rating! So I guess it evens out to the five star no matter how it is given. Since I had read Garrett's previous book on emerging diseases and found it fascinating, I was interested to see she had brought out a book on public health. This is an immense book, and yet she barely scratched the surface of this problem. However, she does choose the most prominent problems in public health, in my opinion. She tackles the fact that our world has grown significantly smaller and at more risk for emerging diseases from other countries with the ease of travel. Garrett also deals with the dismantling of the Soviet Union's government and health infrastructure, and she does it well but delving into the problems that existed prior to the collapse of Communism. Then she tackles the health care crisis in the United States, which has major problems of its own (and is quick to ignore!). She also writes about biowarfare and the tie in between the collapse of the Soviet Union and our own public health problems which will ultimately determine the fate of the world. In spite of being such a large book dealing with a heavy topic, the writing is relatively concise and readable. It must have been a heck of a job to not only write, but rewrite, and narrow down the topics of this book without diluting the importance of public health throughout the world. Very few writers could have pulled off this book as well as Garrett did. Part of that is due to her being a journalist, and not a scientist. This book is scary...well-written nonfiction dealing with such serious topics as public health are always much scarier then books that Stephen King could dream up. It is horrifying to realize how close we are to the precipice, and how ambivalent most people and governments are to the well-being of the world. Most people are unwilling to face the fact that our individual health is intertwined with the health of all...I wish someone would insist that President Bush read this book prior to dismantling more of the health, food, and water standards, and perhaps explain it to him, that ultimately we will pay for neglect of our water and environment, the ignorance and corruption in the food industry, and the lack of basic medical care for the children of America. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh
Rating:
Summary: An absolute must read!
Review: I am unfortunantly just about done with this book and sorry to say it. It reads like an absolute novel. What an incredible inside view of today's public health and government. It must be read to our children. I was born and lived in an Eastern block country and I never doubt it how devious the governments work and this book puts it in a perfect perspective. I look forward to her other book.
Rating: 
Summary: Surgical Intervention Necessary
Review: I bought this book Betrayal of Trust after hearing a very compelling interview with the author Laurie Garrett and NPR's Noah Adams. The first three chapters of eyewitness, investigative reporting on a plague pandemonium in India, media hysteria and government ineptitude at the second major outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, and the sinking of the flagship of the Soviet state, the submarine Kurtz...excuse me, the model health care system for all citizens are very well presented reads. The presentation of the history of public health in the United States with all its gaffes, successes, pursuit by the evil empire of the AMA, is a muddled mess. I was impressed with the attempted scope of over three hundred years of historical evidence. The story line developed chronologicly and thematically, such that with relief I discover I have made it to the 1920's in a treatment of the Golden Days of Public Health only to find that to develop the narrative for certain resistance to Public Health we need to skip back. I don't feel that the author can bring her storytelling to this section which with its footnotes represents over a quarter of the book.There are way to many subthemes to keep track of and are not necessary for the concluding part of her book, where we stand now on the global preparation for threats to the Public Health. There is a woefully lacking index for the book which makes the hundreds of footnotes basically irrelevant. In the panorama of American Public Health the author gives pages to the issue of tobacco and the knowledge of its harm to the Public Health. Not a single line in the index. I think that if the author had found some American stories to report that I would have connected with her presentation and she would have more effectivally made her points. So skip the section on the United States and the footneotes and read the rest of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Good material, poor presentation
Review: I found the book to be interesting, however I was constantly annoyed by the way the book jumped around from topic to topic. Neither the book as a whole nor the individual chapters rose to a climax, but was rather a jumble of information. Some of it was repetative, sometimes even verbatim. I was very dissapointed in the endnotes. Sometimes they listed sources, and other times they gave additional information. However, many times, I flipped back to the endnotes looking for a source and found just an anecdote instead. The general "The information for this section is from..." line does not satisfy me at all for citing sources. I think someone else could have taken the same information and written a much better book.
Rating:
Summary: Good material, poor presentation
Review: I found the book to be interesting, however I was constantly annoyed by the way the book jumped around from topic to topic. Neither the book as a whole nor the individual chapters rose to a climax, but was rather a jumble of information. Some of it was repetative, sometimes even verbatim. I was very dissapointed in the endnotes. Sometimes they listed sources, and other times they gave additional information. However, many times, I flipped back to the endnotes looking for a source and found just an anecdote instead. The general "The information for this section is from..." line does not satisfy me at all for citing sources. I think someone else could have taken the same information and written a much better book.
Rating: 
Summary: One Of Those Included In The Book
Review: I had not intended to write a review of Ms. Garrett's book because I felt as if I was a potentially biased observer! I'm in the book in a somewhat small way...but nonetheless she refers to me by name and place. I had to write this ONLY after I read the review by Adi Givens, her research associate. Ms. Givens claims the inaccurate pieces noted by several reviewers were due to "editorial cuttting". Well, I'm put in a positive light in the book AND and in general agree with the thesis of the work. However, much of what Ms. Garrett attributes to me (events and specific conversations) just never took place or in a very different way than she portrayed them. I've spoken to 3 other individuals cited in the book (and again none of them reflected in negative way so there are no axes to grind) and they claim the same problem. And no one ever called me to confirm the conversation I supposedly had with other individuals, yet they are written as if Ms Garrett was in the room with me . I've heard the same comments from those included in her previous book. Maybe the reviews this book are getting from some of us reflect an author who suffers from some of the same problems that the Vice President is currently experiencing. Facts are facts. This is unfortunate because the message is generally on target!
Rating:
Summary: Not a quick read, but thought provoking
Review: I love Laurie Garrett's work and have read both this book and _The Coming Plague_. And I am ready for her next treatise whenever she may print it.
What reviewers say about the lengthiness and sometimes meandering style is true. When I read her first book, I was reminded of a joke I heard when attending an exhaustive, three day long training about HIV/AIDS counseling and testing. One of the presenters quipped that you might feel like you were dying of AIDS even though you never had it.
Reading this book, you can feel wearied and overcome by the problems. But, if you go with her style, where she interweaves facts with stories of real pepole impacted by the very trends she cites, you get a greater sense of the dimensions of the problems and the reality of the issues.
As we watch our president dismantle so many care systems, I think the chapters on what happened to Russia when they did the same have extreme relevance.
The publish date of this fine book means that some of its data is aging but the representation of the problems and trend remain timely.
Read it.
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