The Hot Zone

Richard Preston 1994

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
pandemic Ebola virus science

Our Take

Preston reconstructs the arrival of Ebola in a suburban Virginia monkey house with the pace of a thriller and the authority of a virologist's nightmare. What the virus does to the human body is described with a precision that is not gratuitous but necessary — you need to understand the mechanism to understand the terror. The most frightening thing is how easily containment was nearly not achieved.

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