Fatal Jump: Tracking the Origins of Pandemics is a journey, by leaps and bounds around the world and through time, to examine the extraordinary circumstances—evolutionary, ecological, and otherwise— that converged and gave birth to some of our most wicked and unexpected plagues and pandemics. Beyond the traditional historical account of human infectious diseases, this book unveils commonalities and coincidences that, throughout the ages, consistently preceded or triggered the emergence of new infectious diseases or the flare-ups of old ones. The pace of disease emergence is accelerating.