At first glance, in this, his memoir, the author’s early dedication to public service seems a little self-serving, although he attributes it to his selfless parents and the Jesuit priests providing him early education in Brooklyn.
His ceaseless efforts to find better treatments for, and means of preventing transmission of HIV globally are admirable and crossed political boundaries. They also seem to be at odds with Catholic teaching even though he is a Catholic.
He goes on to describe the contributions made by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to the fights against various influenzas, Ebola, malaria, Zika, and Covid-19 while he was Director, serving seven different presidents, until he retired last year at age 83.
Along the way, he made countless friends almost all of whom he praises for their dedication to public service The chaos and inconsistency of the Trump White House years are described without much comment. The science behind pandemics and the development of vaccines is described in generally easy terms for the lay public to understand.
In parts of the book, there is a hint of self-aggrandizement. For example, although there is no doubt about his altruism, and dedication, he often refers to private meetings at “his” house, never “our” house, the one he shared with his wife and family. And apparently almost all of his speeches at international meetings were “keynote” addresses. That was not the case the only time I met him, (at a 1985 National Consensus Conference on the emerging field of liver transplantation).
Unless he wore a recorder 24/7 and took extensive notes of every meeting he ever attended, the endless conversations he cites must be extensively paraphrased.
I greatly admire his brilliance and dedication to public service, at times speaking truth to powers that did not want to hear it, and enduring threats to his life. Were it not for the hints of patting himself on the back, I would have given him a 5/5, for this book. As it is I rate this as
4.5/5
Thanks, The New Yorker.
The Passionate Reader 