Recent Books
180 foreign affairs
modern globalization—with the great
expansion of trade and travel by steam-
ship in the early twentieth century—
coincided with the global influenza
pandemic. The predecessor of the
World Health Organization was created
at this time to track and report out-
breaks of threatening diseases. A new
phase of globalization has knit the world
closer together in the last 30 years, and
governments, multilateral institutions
such as the who, and international law
have concomitantly evolved to better
tackle the spread of fatal diseases such as
aids, Ebola, sars, and Zika.Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the
Generic Drug Boom
BY KATHERINE EBAN. Ecco, 2019,
512 pp.In this sometimes frightening book,
Eban delves into the dangerous market
of generic pharmaceutical drugs. In the
United States, the Food and Drug
Administration must certify the patents
for new drugs, a vetting process that
began in the early twentieth century to
guard against fake medicines. When these
patents expire, firms can make generic
versions of the same drugs by reverse
engineering their active ingredients to
produce equivalent medicines without
incurring the costs of research, develop-
ment, and testing. Generic medicines are
therefore much more affordable for
patients around the world. Eban tells the
story of Ranbaxy Laboratories, a now
defunct Indian generic drug firm, and its
successful but problematic entry into the
U.S. market and into other less regulated
markets in other countries. She exam-
ines the fda’s spotty procedures for
inspecting manufacturing plants outsideThe Great Reversal: How America Gave
Up on Free Markets
BY THOMAS PHILIPPON. Harvard
University Press, 2019, 368 pp.
This primer on the recent woes of the
U.S. economy focuses on rising
inequality, the market dominance of a
small number of companies, weak levels
of investment, and low productivity
growth. It attributes these troubling
developments to a decline in
competition that has been brought
about in large part by the rise of very
powerful technology companies and
above all by the lack of enforcement of
antitrust policies. Philippon also points
to the damaging role of politicians who
protect the interests of their wealthy
donors by sponsoring and creating
loopholes in tax and regulatory laws.
The book provides a useful comparison
with Europe, which suffers from the
same ailments but to a lesser degree, and
where the European Union and its
member states more vigorously enforce
policies designed to guarantee
competition.
Globalization and Health
BY JEREMY YOUDE. Rowman &
Littlefield, 2019, 252 pp.
This informative book provides a survey
of how globalization has enabled the
spread of disease and of the concurrent
development of global public health
practices and institutions. Travelers have
spread contagious diseases for centuries.
The Republic of Venice introduced the
first formal form of quarantine in the
fourteenth century during the Black
Death. Unsurprisingly, the first period of