1. How’s this for a provocative argument? The worst disease in the history of humanity apparently has an upside: When it’s not killing little black children, it kills white colonialist invaders. Look at page 35 where Shah quotes a TV journalist from Cameroon: “Channeling the nineteenth-century king of Madagascar who famously boasted that no invader could take on his country’s hazo (impenetrable forests) or tazo (its malignant malarial fevers), he extolled ‘General Anopheles’ for thwarting the armies that would have attacked Africa.” Then she gets dangerously close to endorsing this premise when she writes, “Not everyone living under P. falciparum’s spell considers their situation an unmitigated misfortune . . . It isn’t easy to live with malaria, but those who survive the gauntlet of a falciparum-infested childhood gain a powerful immunological advantage over others.” True, but think of all the women and kids who don’t survive.

2. Those crazy ancient Romans! Page 64 has a great list of the malaria “cures” that the war-hungry civilization of the early centuries engineered. There was the bedbug diet. (Or you could munch on “the liver of a seven-year-old mouse.”) Wearing a necklace imprinted with the word “abracadabra” was once thought to stave off the disease. Or, everyone’s favorite, period sex. Nothing worked, of course, but A for effort.

3. Green eggs and bugborne disease. During World War II, the military used pamphlets to educate soldiers about malaria. “This is Ann,” one read, alongside a cartoon. “She drinks blood! Ann moves around at night (a real party gal) and she’s got a thirst. No whiskey, gin, beer, or rum coke for Ann . . .” And so on. The tone makes marginally more sense when you learn the identity of the pamphlet’s author: Dr. Seuss.