The vital enemy

A biochemist and public health specialist has written an entertaining and eye-opening history of viruses

Aversion to bathing reached an extreme in the UK in the 1600s. Wearing linen among upper-class people in England became a sign of differentiation from others. The shaping of attitudes and perspectives in humans. The bursting of the world’s first “economic bubble” — tulipomania.

All these occurrences have one thing in common: viruses, and Pranay Lal, a biochemist who works for an NGO on public health, explains this phenomenon with remarkably lucidity in his latest book Invisible Empire: The Natural History of Viruses.

Unlike many others of his ilk, Lal doesn’t dwell on a self-engrossed historical account full of medical jargon. Instead,