Original Proposal

[GeorgeKunath]

Originally Posted by GeorgeKunath » Thu Jul 08, 2021 9:05 am – 19 views before being transplanted here


I propose that we read NY Times Bestseller “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” by Michael Lewis (WW Norton & Co 5/4/2021 – 320 pages – $13.65 + shipping or $9.18 Kindle from Amazon.com).

[The Salt Lake COUNTY Library has 0 of 24 copies available with 56 holds; and the Salt Lake CITY Library has 0 of 8 copies available with 37 holds.]

PLEASE SEE THE FOURTH-FOLLOWING SECTION ENTITLED “READING LIBERALLY OBSERVATIONS – THIS BOOK APPEARS TO BE A FARCE AND WILL BE TREATED AS SUCH”

(NB: During the voting at the beginning of our July 14 meeting for the August 11 focus book, George Kunath was asked whether he agreed wholeheartedly with the fourth-following “Reading Liberally Observations” and he affirmed that he did. NB: John Karls who also agreed wholeheartedly with those observations does NOT have a vote each month on the focus book for the following month.]


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Book Description per Amazon.com

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.


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Author Bio Per Amazon

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.


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Book Review Excerpts Per Amazon

"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

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

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


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Reading Liberally Observations – This Book Appears To Be A Farce and Will Be Treated As Such

[The fact that this book appears to be a farce was discussed with George Kunath before he proposed it – but with the realization that political farce posing as a serious book is itself a public-policy issue that deserves our scrutiny together, of course, with the principle of “free speech.”]


Is it any wonder that “The Premonition” has been a NY Times Bestseller???

After all, two of the only three book reviews that Amazon.com was able to find came from the NY Times!!!

[Amazon ALWAYS provides excerpts from more than a dozen book reviews and our original proposals always delete repetitive excerpts and delete reviews from less-prestigious sources so that there is a less-daunting array of 8-10 excerpts.]

[The NY Times NEVER publishes two full-fledged “book reviews” of the same book.]

And is it any wonder that the NY Times promoted it???

After all, the “Book Description” per Amazon.com claims at the beginning – “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.”

How can anyone square this BALD-FACED LIE with the facts that the president instituted a travel ban against China on 1/31/2020 (the first of its kind in the world vis-à-vis the pandemic) and the travel ban was immediately condemned as racist and Xenophobic and worse by all the leading Democrats including Nancy Pelosi who led, 24 days later on 2/24/2020, a protest march and dim sung lunch in San Francisco’s Chinatown???

The leading Democrats were apparently taking their cues already from Dr. Fauci who down played the travel ban on 1/31/2020, the date it was issued, by saying at a press briefing:

“There are a number of countries outside of China that have travel-related cases. And now what we’re seeing is that there are secondary cases from them, and, as [CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield] mentioned, we also have that in this country. The WHO has issued, as you know, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern declaration. If you put all these things together, I underscore what Bob said: We still have a low risk to the American public, but we want to keep it at a low risk. And because there are so many unknowns here, we’re going to take the action that the Secretary [of HHS] will describe, in a temporary way, to make sure we mitigate, as best as we possibly can, this risk.”

So why should Michael Lewis’ selection of some peripheral officials for their “take” on the pandemic be viewed as a serious study of pandemic public-policy???

“The Premonition” appears to be a political “hit piece” aimed at misinforming the demographic comprising readers of Michael Lewis books – none of which have dealt with serious public-policy issues in the past.

Accordingly, if its initial appearance as POLITICAL FARCE is accurate, selection of “The Premonition” as the focus for one of our meetings will be treated as a focus on the public-policy issue of political farce posing as a serious book together, of course, with the principle of “free speech.”


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For anyone who would like to focus on the pandemic as a public-policy issue, Matt Lawlor proposed on 5/23/2021 –

New York Times Bestseller “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System” by the NY Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Science Journalist Matt Richtel (William Morrow Publishing 3/24/2020 – 448 pages – $16.99 + shipping or $12.99 Kindle from Amazon.com).