Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History

“Paul Farmer brings his considerable intellect, empathy, and expertise to bear in this powerful and deeply researched account of the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014. It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book.” ―Bill and Melinda Gates

"[The] history is as powerfully conveyed as it is tragic . . . Illuminating . . . Invaluable." ―Steven Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it?

Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand―Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, Farmer tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority but care was not – and the region’s health care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present.

This thorough and hopeful narrative is a definitive work of reportage, history, and advocacy, and a crucial intervention in public-health discussions around the world.

Paul Farmer (1959-2022) was a founding director and chief strategist of Partners In Health, the Boston-based non-profit, social justice organization dedicated to providing quality, modern healthcare to impoverished regions around the world. A physician, anthropologist, and activist, he was also a Kolokotrones University Professor and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University as well as chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Among his numerous awards and honors is the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Berggruen Prize.

The author of Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, and Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor, Farmer, along with his fellow Partners In Health cofounders Jim Yong Kim and Ophelia Dahl, were featured in the documentary about their organization, Bending the Arc.