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Michael Lewis
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The Premonition: A Pandemic Story Kindle Edition

by Michael Lewis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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New York Times Bestseller



For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about.


Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.


The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.


Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-1324035534
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    May 4, 2021
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    1023 KB
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  1. “Experience is making the same mistake over and over again, only with greater confidence,”
    Highlighted by 4,517 Kindle readers
  2. The root of the CDC’s behavior was simple: fear. They didn’t want to take any action for which they might later be blamed.
    Highlighted by 2,707 Kindle readers
  3. I think this particular story is about the curious talents of a society, and how those talents are wasted if not led.
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From the Publisher

An Amazon Best Book of 2021

Editorial Reviews

Review

An urgent, highly readable contribution to the literature of what might be called the politics of disease.-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

Lewis brings a welcome gimlet eye to the Trump era... the lessons of the "The Premonition" apply to more than just the C.D.C. -- they tell us why government bureaucracies fail.--Nick Confessore "New York Times Book Review"

From the Back Cover

Praise for Michael Lewis

I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.
-- John Williams, New York Times Book Review

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08V91YY8R
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (May 4, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 4, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1023 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 319 pages
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis

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Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of The Undoing Project, Liar's Poker, Flash Boys, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children.

Customer reviews

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Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Provides Coherent Backstory to World Changing Event
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2021
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With this last year so fresh in my mind, and the myriad of questions buzzing around in my head, I was so glad I was able to read this book. It provided coherent background to all the bits and pieces I coddled together from watching the news or reading science articles about the coronavirus. It is a well written book that captures the zeitgeist of the past year. I don't like to come to a book looking for validation, but in some ways it is hard not to because it was published so close to 2020 amidst a pandemic that greatly affected this country and that continues much more severely in other parts of the world.

The story of Charity Dean is compelling if not only because her questions are my questions. Her knowledge of politics and the health care system puts things in a perspective that at times made me mad, made me frustrated, and made me sad. It doesn't seem that being a public health official should be such a struggle, but when one throws in the whims of politics and a lack of support for people who make the real hard decisions, it ends up that way.

The other main characters: Joe DeRisi, Richard Hatchett, and Carter Mecher are the main technologists of the story who keep hope alive: Joe with his work with ViroChip and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and Richard and Carter with their emergency pandemic response plan. I know guys like them. We too have a guy similar to Carter who everyone asks questions of and who is always happy to give answers. I work in a tech field, so I know what it is like to bring one's knowledge and reason to bear so hard down upon an intractable problem. However, their problem was to save the country in a pandemic, a magnitude of a problem I have never had to face.

In the end, with such relatable characters and a good story to tell, and about such a recent polarizing event in the public conscious, this book is a winner. More cold and academic tracts will be written about the 2020 pandemic year five or ten years down the line, but this one came at the proper time and with proper humanization of an event of mind-blowing magnitude. I heartily recommend this book.
7 people found this helpful
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Charlotte F.
5.0 out of 5 stars about time we learned the truth.
Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024
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Amazing writer and appreciate the detail he found with interviewing the important people behind the scenes of the pandemic. Wish everyone in the CDC were as brilliant.
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Roberto M. Barros
4.0 out of 5 stars Another good Michael Lewis investigative book that could've been great 1-2 years from now
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2021
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When I saw that the author of The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind Side and so many other great books had written a book about the Covid pandemic, it was a no brainer to me. Michael Lewis is one of my favourite writers and I'm amazed at how able he is to make great stories out of so many different subjects, some of them very technical.

And overall this is a good, informative book, with several little known facts that make your understanding of the reality much better. It's much more like The Big Short than with the sports oriented ones, in it tries to depict different, independent people that do not conform to the norms and challenge the system, and somehow band together at some point in time to be proven right. But this is one is not on par with the ones I mentioned.

Somehow it lacks something... perhaps because we're still the midst of the pandemic, it lacks the benefit of some hindsight and there are still many things open to question. It seems as it has no finale to the movie. There were some people who somehow anticipated a thing like this would happen, made a great plan that the government at the end did not enforce, policts got in between and a lot of people died, and that was that. Perhaps it's the fact that the people who anticipated it were not indicated and proven right, at least in the public's eyes... somehow they are still as anonymous and even less involved now than they were before the pandemic.

I recall Michael Lewis in his other books going in lots of detail and being very thorough (but never boring) in why things are what they are and using this as a backbone to the main story... he managed to make baseball statistics and financial derivatives sexy. But here things seem a little bit rushed, somehow the glue that connects all the dots is not as strong. The books-turned-into-movies seem tighter, as if he spent many years into perfecting them (which now could not be the case, as we're basically one year+ into the pandemic).

It's also weird that in some moments it try to depict the actions taken by the main characters as a premonition, while in fact, it seems just the acknowledging that some things that have already happened (like the spanish flu and the SARS epidemic) is likely to happen again, augmented by the fact that we're much more a globalized world than we were back then... it would be a premonition if they knew when it would happen, not that it would happen (like when people talk about an asteroid hitting Earth or the Big One hitting California... it probably will happen, but when?).

At the end I cannot shake the impression that, were this book released in a year or two from now, it could be another smash hit and perhaps become another top grossing blockbuster, perhaps featuring Emma Stone as Dr. Charity Dean.
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Richard Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent description of the fight
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2021
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This book tells the story on the ground... through people who actually had to deal with the reality of the pandemic rather than talk about it. Lewis' focus on the Public Health system in the US ,which is underfunded and unappreciated, is probably;y the most important part of this book. Its was local Public Health offices which ultimately had to deal with the crisis and they were , in many cases, not supported by government agencies further up the chain. They were often despised and their personnel were sometimes threatened as they tried to carry out suggestions sent down form the CDC and their respective state Departments of Health. Lewis describes the CDC as a "scholarly institution" with plenty of published research papers but absolutely no plan of action for dealing with the pandemic.
Anyone paying attention realized that Trump and Redfield were simply not up to the task and that their only plan was to downplay the crisis. Obama realized there could be a problem but didn't push it. To my surprise it was George W. Bush who in 2006, after reading Barry's excellent book on the 1918 flu, became alarmed and started the wheels of government turning so that the country might have a plan should a serious pandemic strike. Lewis wisely doesn't spend much time on the political figures in this story which makes the book more relevant and compelling. We will have another pandemic and hopefully .the next time, instead of downplaying it, we will have learned our lesson and will be ready to act. It was really interesting to learn about school closures and why they were so important to slowing the pandemic. This is the best book I've read on the subject so far....a real page turner.
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Top reviews from other countries

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POLANA
5.0 out of 5 stars Now you know there are people out there who care!
Reviewed in Canada on January 21, 2024
Verified Purchase
Answers a lot of questions swirling around COVID. Well written and thoughtful!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars The book everyone needs to read
Reviewed in India on April 13, 2024
Verified Purchase
While the author tries to bring out the outstanding individuals who try their best despite the system to bring out positive outcomes, what comes across is the sad reality that our institutions aren't ready to deal with the challenges of the future..

A book that will shed light on possibly how every aspect of government works and probably always will work because of the incentives built in that almost always are against the interests of the general public.
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Big Mama
5.0 out of 5 stars Just the best, as always with this most talented author... I learned more about the pandemic and the dreadful response of the U.S. government
Reviewed in Germany on July 27, 2022
Verified Purchase
t in this book than in the dozen other books I have read about this terrifying contagion spreading still and what must be done about it.
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Loren
5.0 out of 5 stars Full of insights, and surprisingly easy to read
Reviewed in France on June 10, 2021
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Although this a book about the Covid pandemic, it reads like a well-written novel. Definitely. Worth reading.Lots of insights, from medicine to computer science to politics.
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Shantaram
5.0 out of 5 stars 今マイケルがマイブームである
Reviewed in Japan on October 1, 2023
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１０．３に最新刊が発売されるのが楽しみです。その前にこちらを読み終えよう！
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