I started reading Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching for reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. But may I say that it could not be any more relevant to our lives at this particular time?

Dr. Michael Greger does a wonderful job of explaining the science of viruses in general, the history of pandemics (and our political/economic/public health/media responses to them), and the steps that we would need to take to reduce the terrible dangers that pandemic influenza poses to human life, health, economics, national security, and so on. His writing is clear, engaging, and accessible, while being grounded in meticulous research and including copious citations from all sorts of relevant experts around the world.

No joke: this is not good bedtime reading, but it is a great read!

It looks like the full text was available for free on the internet for some time, but that it is temporarily unavailable because Dr. Greger is updating it with new findings about COVID-19 for a new edition, so try checking back to http://www.birdflubook.org/ or https://drgreger.org/pages/selected-writings later to see more about that.