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On Immunity: An Inoculation (2014)

by Eula Biss(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1555976891 (ISBN13: 9781555976897)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: Well-written and a pleasure to read. But somehow it was almost too easy to read. It felt more like I was eavesdropping on informal chatty banter from a neurotic new mother, albeit from an intelligent (and likeable) neurotic new mother. And while I understand her choice to not include real citations/footnotes for sources, that made me not trust many of the things she claimed to be 'facts.' She does include 'notes' and 'selected sources' at the end of the book, but she could have woven these in to the narrative and strengthened the book. I got really annoyed with how many times she inserted random quotes from her oncologist father. Other quotes/comments she included from various 'experts' seemed to be straight out of Frontline's 'The Vaccine Wars' from 2010. Bottom line: I l... moreike her writing but was disappointed in this book.
review 2: Brilliant book that explores the metaphors surrounding immunity. From Bram Stoker's Dracula to the ditzy, misleading medicine/pseudoscience of Bob Sears and Joseph Mercola, Biss plumbs the depth of society's fears and misconceptions of immunization and explains immunity (herd and otherwise), a difficult concept for most to grasp, in layman's terms. She asks the crucial question: What do we owe each other? And her last two sentences sum it up: "However we choose to think of the social body, we are each other's environment. Immunity is a shared space-- a garden we tend together." less

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