Although it may appear that this book is about malaria, that’s not really true. The core objective for this effort arose from the realization that, with the tremendous advances made in biology over the past few decades, the courses that students are taking are becoming ever more specialized. The only place where our students were exposed to the full range of biology was in introductory courses. The problem, then, was that the science was presented in a linear fashion, typically beginning with the basics of the chemical nature of life (e.g., the properties of water) and then moving through biochemistry, genetics, physiology, anatomy, behavior, evolution, and ecology in a stepwise fashion. Too often, it seemed, students were not understanding that biology is not at all a straight line, but an interconnected web: each specialized field builds on others and then contributes back to them in turn. That web does not stop with biology, but extends into the other sciences: chemistry, physics, mathematics, statistics. And issues in the real world must go even further, into economics, political science, ethics, history…. There really is no limit that I can see.

Malaria is not the subject of this book, but the vehicle for examining this web, to see how fields as disparate as ethics and population genetics can interact. The disease is a useful vehicle because its importance is almost self-evident. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people die from malaria, and most of them are young children, barely old enough to go to school. Since most of my students are interested in careers in the health professions, this subject is an effective mechanism to link an academic topic with their own priorities.

As you work your way through the book, try to keep this overarching objective in mind. I have tried to keep the text readable, and so have not explicitly cited all the voluminous literature on the subject. I also cannot cover everything, and so at the end of each chapter I’ve tried to pose a leading question, under the title of “Beyond the Book,” with the intention of stimulating further thought.

I always tell the students in my class that my point is not to have them learn new facts about malaria. Of course, they will do so, but that happens more as a by-product of the larger aim. Insofar as we are successful, I use the word “we” since I believe that teaching and learning are a collaboration, then the students will better understand how their coursework is not a set of separate subjects, but part of a larger whole. I did not start writing these paragraphs with the intention of bringing educational philosophy into the mix; I suppose that itself is a small preview of what I hope will be a rewarding experience.