Harper

Viral: Tìm kiếm nguồn gốc của COVID-19

Một cuộc điều tra hấp dẫn về nguồn gốc của đại dịch toàn cầu

**"Chan và Ridley viết với một sự cấp bách… khiến người đọc phải say sưa với những miêu tả đầy ám ảnh về bản chất của virus, cách thức hoạt động của các phòng thí nghiệm bệnh truyền nhiễm và những mô tả hết sức rõ ràng về loài dơi. . . . Họ đã tái hiện một cách đầy sức thuyết phục cách thức mà các mầm bệnh nguy hiểm có thể bị rò rỉ từ phòng thí nghiệm cũng như xuất hiện tự nhiên." (New York Times Book Review)**

Hiểu rõ COVID-19 bắt nguồn từ đâu là điều vô cùng quan trọng cho tương lai của nhân loại. "Viral" là cuốn sách sâu sắc và uy tín nhất về cuộc tìm kiếm nguồn gốc của virus.

Một bí ẩn chưa được giải đáp

Năm 2019, một loại virus mới đã tấn công loài người, gây ra những hậu quả chưa từng có. Việc tìm ra nguồn gốc và cách thức virus lây nhiễm sang người là ưu tiên cấp bách, nhưng kỳ vọng ban đầu về một câu trả lời dễ dàng đã tan vỡ. Gần hai năm sau khi đại dịch xảy ra, bí ẩn về nguồn gốc của SARS-CoV-2 không chỉ chưa được giải quyết mà còn trở nên phức tạp hơn.

Trong cuốn sách độc đáo này, một nhà khoa học và một nhà văn đã hợp tác để cố gắng đi đến tận cùng câu chuyện về việc một loại virus có họ hàng gần nhất sống trong loài dơi ở miền nam Trung Quốc lại có thể lây lan trong số người dân cách đó hơn 1.500 km ở thành phố Vũ Hán. Họ vật lộn với thực tế khó hiểu rằng virus đã không để lại dấu vết nào như thường thấy trong các vụ bùng phát dịch bệnh: không có động vật hoặc động vật hoang dã bị nhiễm bệnh tại các chợ, không có chuỗi trường hợp đầu tiên ở những du khách đến thành phố, không có dịch bệnh âm ỉ ở khu vực nông thôn, không có sự thích nghi nhanh chóng của virus với vật chủ mới - con người.

Cuộc hành trình đi tìm sự thật

Để giải quyết bí ẩn cấp bách này, "Viral" đã đào sâu vào các sự kiện diễn ra vào năm 2019 dẫn đến năm 2021, chi tiết về những gì đã xảy ra tại các chợ động vật và phòng thí nghiệm vi sinh vật học, các hồ sơ và dữ liệu bị giấu kín trong các luận án và trang web được lưu trữ của Trung Quốc, cũng như các manh mối có thể được giải mã từ chính mã di truyền của virus.

Kết quả là một câu chuyện trinh thám đầy kịch tính đưa người đọc ngày càng sâu hơn vào một hang động bí ẩn. Từng bước một, các tác giả khám phá những đường hầm đầy hứa hẹn, chỉ để chứng minh rằng đó là những ngõ cụt, cho đến khi, hàng dặm dưới lòng đất, họ thấy mình gần đến một đường hầm dẫn đến ánh sáng.

Đánh giá nội dung sách

"Viral" là một cuốn sách đáng đọc cho bất kỳ ai muốn hiểu rõ hơn về nguồn gốc của COVID-19. Cuốn sách được viết một cách rõ ràng, dễ hiểu và đầy lôi cuốn. Các tác giả sử dụng một cách tiếp cận khoa học nhưng vẫn giữ được sự hấp dẫn và kịch tính của một câu chuyện trinh thám.

Cuốn sách này là một lời nhắc nhở về sự nguy hiểm của các virus và tầm quan trọng của việc nghiên cứu chúng. Nó cũng là một bài học về sự phức tạp của việc tìm kiếm sự thật và sự cần thiết phải giữ vững tinh thần khoa học trong một thế giới ngày càng đầy bất ổn.

"Viral" chắc chắn sẽ là một cuốn sách quan trọng trong những năm tới, đặc biệt là trong bối cảnh các mối đe dọa về dịch bệnh toàn cầu đang gia tăng.

<p>Thorn</p>

<p>For Princess Alyrra, choice is a luxury she's never had... until she's betrayed.</p>

<p>Princess Alyrra has never enjoyed the security or power of her rank. Between her family's cruelty and the court's contempt, she has spent her life in the shadows. Forced to marry a powerful foreign prince, Alyrra embarks on a journey to meet her betrothed with little hope for a better future. But powerful men have powerful enemies - and now so does Alyrra.</p>

<p>Betrayed during a magical attack, her identity is switched with another woman's, giving Alyrra the first choice she's ever had: to start a new life for herself or fight for a prince she's never met. But Alyrra soon finds that Prince Kestrin is not at all what she expected. While walking away will cost Kestrin his life, returning to the court may cost Alyrra her own. As Alyrra is coming to realise, sometimes the hardest choice means learning to trust herself.</p>

<p>Inspired by The Goose Girl fairytale by the Brothers Grimm.</p>

<p>Anna O: A Today Show and GMA Buzz Pick</p>

<p>1 International Bestseller</p>

<p>GMA Buzz Pick • A Today Show Pick • A People Magazine Pick</p>

<p>“A riveting, unsettling crime novel that will keep you turning pages well past your bedtime. Is Anna O a sleeping beauty or a sleeping killer? Matthew Blake's tension-filled thriller is as elusive and mysterious as sleep itself.”—Nita Prose, 1 New York Times author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest</p>

<p>Joining the ranks of Gillian Flynn, A. J. Finn, and Alex Michaelides, Matthew Blake delivers the thriller of the year: a dark, twisty, and shocking mystery about a young woman who commits a double murder while sleepwalking, and then never opens her eyes again.</p>

<p>ANNA O WILL WAKE UP THE WORLD</p>

<p>What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all?</p>

<p>We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we sleep?</p>

<p>Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.”</p>

<p>Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O’”case and waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.</p>

<p>As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes.</p>

<p>Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they find out.</p>

<p>The Little Liar</p>

<p>An instant New York Times Bestseller</p>

<p>Beloved bestselling author Mitch Albom returns with a powerful novel of hope and forgiveness that moves from a coastal Greek city during WWII to America in the golden age of Hollywood, as the intertwined lives of three young survivors are forever changed by the perils of deception and the grace of redemption.</p>

<p>Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. His schoolmate, Fannie, loves him because of it. Nico’s older brother Sebastian resents him for both these facts. When their young lives are torn apart during the war, it will take them decades to find each other again. </p>

<p>Nico’s innocence and goodness is used against his tightly knit community when a German officer barters Nico’s reputation for honesty into a promise to save his loved ones. When Nico realizes the consequences of the betrayal, he can never tell the truth again. He will spend the rest of this life changing names, changing locations and identities, desperate to find a way to forgiveness—for himself and from the people he loves most.</p>

<p>Albom’s extraordinary storytelling is at its powerful best in his first novel to confront the destruction that lying can wreak both on the world stage as well as on the individual lives that get caught up in it. As The Stranger in the Lifeboat spoke to belief, The Little Liar speaks to hope, in a breathless page-turner that will break your heart open and fill it with the power of the human spirit and the goodness that lies within us all.</p>

<p>Narrated by the voice of Truth itself, The Little Liar is a timeless story about the power of love to ultimately redeem us, no matter how deeply we blame ourselves for our mistakes. </p>

<p>The Enemy Of The People: A Dangerous Time To Tell The Truth In America</p>

<p>A&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestseller.</p>

<p>From CNN’s veteran Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers he faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth, featuring new material exclusive to the paperback edition.&nbsp;</p>

<p>In Mr. Trump’s campaign against what he calls “Fake News,” CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, is public enemy number one. From the moment Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has attacked the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”</p>

<p>Acosta presents a damning examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy. When the leader of the free world incites hate and violence, Acosta doesn’t back down, and he urges his fellow citizens to do the same.</p>

<p>At Mr. Trump’s most hated network, CNN, Acosta offers a never-before-reported account of what it’s like to be the President’s most hated correspondent. Acosta goes head-to-head with the White House, even after Trump supporters have threatened his life with words as well as physical violence.</p>

<p>From the hazy denials and accusations meant to discredit the Mueller investigation, to the president’s scurrilous tweets, Jim Acosta is in the eye of the storm while reporting live to millions of people across the world. After spending hundreds of hours with the revolving door of White House personnel, Acosta paints portraits of the personalities of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner and more. Acosta is tenacious and unyielding in his public battle to preserve the First Amendment and RealNews.</p>

<p>Jameela Green Ruins Everything</p>

<p>“I think we got off on the wrong foot, with you telling me I had to be killed and then me getting all upset about it. Let’s start again. My name is Jameela, and I’m a writer. What do you do, besides . . . assassinations? Is that a hobby or more of a full-time thing?”&nbsp;</p>

<p>Jameela Green has only one wish: to see her memoir on the New York Times bestseller list. When that doesn’t work out, she decides that her best next step is to make a deal with God, so she heads over to her local mosque. The idealistic new imam, Ibrahim Sultan, is appalled by Jameela’s shallowness but agrees to assist her, on one condition—that she perform a good deed.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a series of unfortunate events. The homeless man they try to help gets recruited by a terrorist group, causing federal authorities to become suspicious of Ibrahim. When the imam mysteriously disappears, Jameela is certain that the CIA has captured her new friend for interrogation and possibly torture.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Despite having no talent for this sort of thing, Jameela decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him. Her quest soon lands her at the center of an international plan targeting the leader of the terrorist organization—a scheme that puts Jameela and count-less others, including her hapless husband and clever but disapproving daughter, at risk.&nbsp;</p>

<p>A no-holds-barred satire about the international cost of the American Dream, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a compulsively readable, darkly comedic, yet unexpectedly touching story of one woman’s search for meaning and connection.</p>

<p>The Little Book of Aliens</p>

<p>“With wit and brio, Frank separates current nonsense about aliens from the serious and fascinating search for extraterrestrial life.” —Carlo Rovelli, New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics</p>

<p>From astrophysicist Adam Frank, a little book on the biggest questions in our search for extraterrestrial life, questions we stand ready to answer.</p>

<p>Everyone is curious about life in the Universe, UFOs and whether ET is out there. Over the course of his thirty-year career as an astrophysicist, Adam Frank has consistently been asked about the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. Are aliens real? Where are they? Why haven’t we found them? What happens if we do?</p>

<p>We’ve long been led to believe that astronomers spend every night searching the sky for extraterrestrials, but the truth is we have barely started looking. Not until now have we even known where to look or how. In The Little Book of Aliens, Frank, a leading researcher in the field, takes us on a journey to all that we know about the possibility of life outside planet Earth and shows us the cutting-edge science that has brought us to this unique moment in human history: the one where we go find out for ourselves.</p>

<p>In this small book with big stakes, Frank gives us a rundown of everything we need to know, from the scientific origins of the search for intelligent life, the Fermi Paradox, the Kardashev Scale, the James Webb Telescope, as well as UFOs and their conspiracy theories. Drawing from his own work and that of other scientists studying the possibility of alien life, he brings together the latest scientific thinking, data, ideas, and discoveries to equip us with the critical facts as we stand at what may be the last moment in human history where we still believe we are all alone. This book is about everything we do—and do not—know about life, intelligent or otherwise beyond Earth. In language that is engaging, entertaining and fun, The Little Book of Aliens provides a comprehensive first look at how close we are to finding out if others actually exist—and if they do, what they might be like.</p>

<p>Humankind is on the precipice of finding its neighbors. What comes next? No person is better suited to answer that question—and lead the search—than Adam Frank. </p>

<p>The Cherry Robbers</p>

<p>"Sarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal." —Maria Semple</p>

<p>The highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her “slyly subversive” (EW) cult-hit Dietland—a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up.?</p>

<p>IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.</p>

<p>INSTEAD IT WAS THE LAST.</p>

<p>Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.</p>

<p>Yet it soon becomes clear that for the Chapel sisters, marriage equals death.&nbsp;</p>

<p>When the eldest sister walks down the aisle, tragedy strikes. The bride dies mysteriously the very next day, leaving her family and the town in shock. But this is just the beginning of a chain of disasters that will make each woman wonder whether true love will kill her, too. Only Iris, the second-youngest, finds a way to escape—but can she outrun the family curse forever?</p>

<p>Sarai Walker, the acclaimed author of the cult-hit novel Dietland, building off the Gothic tradition of Shirley Jackson, brings to life this riveting, deliciously twisted feminist tale, a gorgeous and provocative page-turner about the legacy of male power and the cost of female freedom.</p>

<p>Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner offer the long-awaited paperback edition of Freakonomics, the runaway bestseller, including six Freakonomics columns from the New York Times Magazine and a Q &amp; A with the authors.</p>