Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
    Unavailable
    The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
    Unavailable
    The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story

    Written by Richard Preston

    Narrated by James Naughton

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "The bard of biological weapons captures
    the drama of the front lines."
    -Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy


    The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with "hot" agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense.

    Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world's most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers-at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines.

    Usamriid went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington, D.C. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government's response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven Hatfill.

    Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 8, 2002
    ISBN9780553756555
    Unavailable
    The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story
    Author

    Richard Preston

    Michael Crichton has sold over 200 million books, which have been translated into thirty-eight languages; thirteen of his books have been made into films. Also known as a filmmaker and the creator of ER, he remains the only writer to have had the number one book, movie, and TV show simultaneously. At the time of his death in 2008, Crichton was well into the writing of Micro; Richard Preston was selected to complete the novel. Richard Preston is the internationally bestselling author of eight books, including The Hot Zone and The Wild Trees. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives with his wife and three children near Princeton, New Jersey.

    More audiobooks from Richard Preston

    Related to The Demon in the Freezer

    Related audiobooks

    Biology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Reviews for The Demon in the Freezer

    4/5

    402 ratings32 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      The Demon in the Freezer is such a great title by a talented writer. Unfortunately the information it contains is now outdated and incomplete, the people it describes mostly retired or dead, and events have moved on. Nevertheless, one will come away with the knowledge that smallpox is the worst disease man has ever known. To be really frightened about weaponized smallpox read The Dead Hand (2011) which won a Pulitzer for good reason - it will change your life in a way this book can only hint at. The other problem is Preston focused on the anthrax attacks of 2001 which took a good decade or more to solve (if it ever was) so he was very early in this. The writing is great but the story is fading.
    • 4/5
      Quite a well written and frightening account of weaponized smallpox and anthrax. His previous book, The Hot Zone is a much better read.
    • 4/5
      Concerning my reading, it is style over substance that I go for. If there happens to be beauty in both, I rate highly. This book was definitely substance first, style last. But the substance was so substantial it still gets a tick from me.The Demon in the Freezer is in this case (I wonder how many cases of there being demons in the freezer there are?) the smallpox virus. Officially eradicated in 1979, scientists kept specimens of the virus alive and frozen. With the increasing threat of terror invasions of the biological weapon type, there is now a school of thought that says all stocks of the virus should be destroyed so that it cannot fall into the wrong hands and be used against human populations. This virus is not a nice one. You can get if from someone easily and unknowingly before they even know they have it, and for ten days after they show the first flu-like symptoms. Its spread in today's interwoven societies would be exponential. You die in pain and slowly if you are the one in three that it is likely to kill. This is all before the notion that stocks of the smallpox virus are probably held in freezers in Iraq, North Korea and other states of questionable repute. That they could be being modified on a genetic level to resist vaccines is of great concern to scientists and governments around the world.Concerns about other biological weapons are discussed here too, in particular anthrax which was distributed post 9/11 via the mail in the US and proved to be both deadly to those who were exposed to its spores, and very costly to clean up after.On a more lighthearted note, my favourite part of the book follows: "Pox hunters have so far discovered mousepox, monkeypox, skunkpox, pigpox, goatpox, camelpox, cowpox, pseudo-cowpox, buffalopox, gerbilpox, several deerpoxes, chamoispox, a couple of sealpoxes, turkeypox, canarypox, pigeonpox, starlingpox, peacockpox, sparrowpox, juncopox, mynahpox, quailpox, parrotpox and toadpox........There's dolphinpox, penguinpox, two kangaroopoxes, raccoonpox and quokkapox........snakepox and crocpox."But fear not, only the animal in the title gets the virus just as smallpox only uses humans as its host. This was a fast and fantastic read.
    • 4/5
      Long story short: Smallpox. Bioterrorism. Forget about your potty debates. We're all doomed. The end.

      However, I do highly recommend reading the longer version! Just beware, it may make for some sleepless nights and/or paranoia.

      Notes from my 2013 attempt at reading the book: Good book, just scares the hell out of me! Hopefully I can gather my wits about me enough to be able to finish this one day!
    • 5/5
      Preston's exploration of Smallpox and its potential threat as a weapon of bio-terrorism is powerful, and still timely (having been published originally in 2002). Through a narrative that reads as smoothly as fiction, and with just enough detail when it comes to history and explanation, he makes a clear case for the fact that smallpox is far more frightening than many threats we hear of more regularly, allowing his book to be all the more powerful because he sets his main focus up against the anthrax scares that were so present in the public mind upon this book's first publication. The message: 'You're afraid of anthrax, but you're worrying about the wrong thing." Of course, this isn't a book built for the scientists who are choosing where to focus their grants or funding. This is a book meant for the average person who can't help wondering what bioterrorism could mean, how it could show up, how we can fight it when it does, and whether smallpox is really a thing of the past.The difficult thing about this book, truthfully, is remembering while reading that Preston is presenting history and fact, because it is so easy to read, and the characters are so well-drawn and clear that this doesn't feel like a book of facts, names, and potentialities--it feels like a story. And, of course, it is, albeit a true one.There's no doubt that this book has the potential to give readers nightmares if they stop at the wrong moment or allow it to sink into their brains too close to bedtime, but it's worth reading for anyone who wants some insight into the subjects at hand, and it's certainly a book I'd recommend. I'll be looking up more of Preston's work, no doubt.
    • 3/5
      This, the story of smallpox in modern times (with a little anthrax for spice), is tautly written, like a thriller. Which it sort of is, only scarier because it's true. Preston is a good writer, he picks out memorable things about people, and he gets a free pass from me forever after referring to a doctor as "like the lion in Narnia" with backup examples. Well done, if scary as all get-out. 3.5
    • 4/5
      I remember Preston's previous book, The Hot Zone about Ebola, absolutely blowing me away. A non-fiction book that was more terrifying than any thriller by Michael Crichton. This didn't impress me the way that other book did, even if it did suck me in and engross me--it read incredibly fast, the kind of book you can tear through in a few hours if you're even a moderately fast reader. There certainly were parts of this book that were chilling and terrifying--and parts that were inspiring. The inspiring part told the story of the Small Pox Eradication program that in the course of less than fifteen years eliminated a virus that has been "thought to have killed more people than any other infectious pathogen"--even more than the Black Plague. This book sweeps past the history of small pox faster and less thoroughly than I liked. The earliest use of a vaccination he mentioned was by an English physician in 1797. Yet I can remember reading how George Washington inoculated his troops for small pox during the Revolutionary War. I also remembered reading how John Adams was inoculated against small pox as a young man. So obviously there's more to the history of this disease and the fight against it than is presented in the book, although Preston does allude to how it (and possibly measles) had a horrific impact on the indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, virtually annihilating them, and how blankets infected with small pox were used by the English, at least in one documented case, against the Indians in a primitive form of biological warfare. But my own knowledge of small pox left me feeling the historical picture given the reader was incomplete.The main focus of the book though is the prospect of modern biological warfare. For when the World Health Organization ended the work of small pox eradication there were two official, legal sources left undestroyed--one in America and one in Russia. That is the demon in the freezer. And Preston details the evidence that the Soviets used their stock to create strategic weapons to be delivered on biologically tipped warheads--and that the knowledge, and stocks of the virus, have certainly made their way to other nations. So the demon's loose. If that's not scary enough, Preston also devotes much of the book to the 2001 Anthrax attacks. This book was published in 2002, so there wasn't much resolution to that story. And I have to admit I was... well, disconcerted by the emphasis laid on the Iraqis having such biological weapons. Given what we've learned since about the claims for their capacity for weapons of mass destruction, in retrospect it makes Preston's clanging alarm bells seem like fearmongering, if not warmongering, and that's not the kind of thing I say lightly or often. Nevertheless I found this an absorbing and informative book.
    • 3/5
      Ack! We're all going to die from smallpox! No, wait... we're all going to die from anthrax! No, wait... we're all going to die from anthrax-laced smallpox! No, wait... MONKEYPOX is going to get us! Or is it mousepox? Meh. Whatever. This is the second book I've read from Richard Preston. You'd have thought that I'd have run screaming from his writing after reading The Hot Zone. But, no. I had to read more. Granted, it has been many years since the mere thought of recycled air on a plane gave me the heebie jeebies, but still... this is scary stuff. You thought that smallpox had been eradicated and that the remaining seeds of the virus had been destroyed. You would be wrong. You thought that the smallpox vaccination that you got 50 years ago is still protecting you. (ok, it was I who got the vaccination 50 years ago... don't forget that I was premature) You would be batting 0 for 2. Not only is smallpox still around, but our friendly neighborhood scientists have experimented with the damned virus for so long, it's possible that if there is an outbreak, the world might have to deal with a super-virus. Oh, joy. Richard Preston goes into fairly graphic detail when he writes about pox, what it does and how it does what it does. Wait, there's more. The author veers from variola (our pox's true name) after the anthrax attacks in 2001. He revisits the anthrax laced letters that were mailed to two senators and several news agencies. He reminds us about the postal workers who died from anthrax, the elderly woman who died from anthrax because she inhaled a few spores that were clinging to a letter that was processed in the same facility as the anthrax letters. He reminds us that five people altogether died from that attack. He also reminds us that no one was ever caught... and that it would be very easy for another attack to be launched. Scary and scarier. So. The book is fairly disjointed. It starts out as a warning about smallpox and then suddenly takes off in the direction of anthrax. It jumps around fairly frequently. However, I found the whole thing fascinating. Preston uses a casual narrative style, which makes the book easy to read and easy to understand. I won't say that I enjoyed it, but I felt the same way about The Hot Zone. Fascinating and unsettling. Did you know that there is a pox for just about every living creature? Me either. But there is. And you'll learn about them all in this book. One word of warning... I tried taking the book with me to a restaurant. Bad move. Weeping pustules and pasta primavera do not mix. Srsly. Eww.
    • 3/5
      I now know way more than any person should probably know about small pox, so it's a good thing I find all that medical ookiness interesting. This book isn't for the faint of heart and, um, small pox would TOTALLY SUCK. Very interesting that humans kind of have had the chance to completely irradicate small pox, but it's also kind of impossible to do that since it's been weaponized. Narration was fine - I was interested enough in the subject matter that the no-frills narration didn't make or break this book. Recommended for people who like fascinating books and aren't grossed out by pus.
    • 4/5
      Preston focuses on the 2001 anthrax attacks, together with the potential for smallpox to be used as a biological weapon. The story is a bit disjointed, although it mostly follows chronological order. It is quite compelling, though. Preston gives us the science, but also close and insightful looks at the involved personalities. A very fast read.
    • 5/5
      Another good one from Preston. These books can be more horrifying than any horror book because they are about reality. Science writing, but not dry or boring at all and understandable even if you don't have a science back round. It will make you wonder if that smallpox injection which left a scar on your arm from grade school in the sixties, was actually worth it after all (probably not, its too old). The foolishness is that all this fear (and possible future horror) could have been prevented if only the sample of a disease which was supposed to be eradicated in the world wide population was actually destroyed and not mysteriously lost from the laboratory where it was stored.
    • 4/5
      Another book that will give you some serious nightmares. Really cool & interesting stuff on how smallpox was eradicated by a huge team of people all over the world. At some point it was thought that the only smallpox left in the world was at the CDC in Atlanta & at a Russian virology facility.Then came the 1980's & pretty good evidence that the Russians were conducting research on weaponizing smallpox. Meanwhile, US eradicated its supply of vaccine (to save money) - leaving us with about 1 vaccine for every 12,000 people. Then the Soviet Union fell apart & who knows where all those stores of weaponized smallpox went. Just yikes.While the emerging hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola are pretty freakin' scary, they (so far) aren't airborne - transmission is from skin and mucous membrane contact. Ebola also tends to burn through a population very quickly - killing off so many people around it that it runs out of places to jump. This makes it a less than optimal bioterrorism weapon.Smallpox, however, is unbelievably scary. It's airborne. During the 20th century it was responsible for between 300-500 million deaths. Transmission rates were it to re-emerge today are estimated to be at about an order of 10. That means 1 infected person would infect 10 others who would each infect 10 others, etc.Preston covers the debate among current scientists around whether or not to continue working with smallpox & testing it. Those against argue that it should all be destroyed. Those for argue that it can't all be destroyed and that with the ever present threat of bioterrorism on the rise, research should continue if only for the purpose of developing better vaccines. There are a number of nasty complications associated with the current vaccine which has been around since 1796.Preston also talks a bit about the anthrax letters, transmission, and early stages of the investigation into who sent them, but as the book was published in 2002, not much is known at the time he was writing.This book is definitely worth reading if you're interested in this stuff. It's technical enough, but not so technical you want to pull your eyes out. Quite enjoyable, if scary.
    • 5/5
      Such an interesting book!
    • 4/5
      Excellent book about smallpox.
    • 4/5
      On December 9, 1979, smallpox, the most deadly human virus, ceased to exist in nature. After eradication, it was confined to freezers located in just two places on earth: the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Maximum Containment Laboratory in Siberia. But these final samples were not destroyed at that time, and now secret stockpiles of smallpox surely exist. For example, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent end of its biological weapons program, a sizeable amount of the former Soviet Union's smallpox stockpile remains unaccounted for, leading to fears that the virus has fallen into the hands of nations or terrorist groups willing to use it as a weapon. Scarier yet, some may even be trying to develop a strain that is resistant to vaccines. This disturbing reality is the focus of this fascinating, terrifying, and important book.
    • 5/5
      A good read. The story of the (almost) eradication of smallpox. Side stories of eboli, anthrax (after 9/11) and other diseases. Ends with current and scary stuff that can be done with gene manipulation of smallpox. Predicts that bioterrorism is the new and very cheap nuclear weapon.
    • 4/5
      Preston has a good blend of giving scientific explanations without burdening the non-scientist.He tells a good story, starting from specific incident and then expanding to the science.
    • 4/5
      Preston is a journalist and first-rate writer. Here he focuses his investigation on the small pox virus - which, having been virtually eradicated from the natural world, is still stockpiled in the freezers of several nations. This is non-fiction that reads like the best medical thriller. Fascinating and chilling.
    • 4/5
      A very scary look at how easily the smallpox virus could be used as a bioterrorism agent.
    • 4/5
      In the same manner of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer tells a massively interesting story of smallpox - how the deadliest disease that ever existed on the planet becomes the only disease that humanity is able to completely eradicate. Very informative look, especially now, its a great retrospective into disease and the history of weaponization of diseases. The history of smallpox and its defeat is only the first half of the book, the rest are events related to the development of biological weapons based on smallpox (mainly in the USSR and Russia), the stockpile of smallpox vaccine of the World Health Organization and storage of still existing deep-frozen smallpox samples.Sounds a lot more interesting than it actually manages to be. Also the second half of the book reads more like a novelization which is interesting but also sort of jarring combination. Not terrible but different for sure.The audio book read by Paul Boehmer is also massively entertaining. He is a great performer to injects a lot of life into the book with accents and differentiation between history, the to date journalistic parts, and the last half to 3/4 of the book that reads more like a story.Great read - superb audiobook. Highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Scary. I read this during COVID-19 (June 2020) and it puts into perspective (perhaps) how prepared we are as a Nation to handle a large-scale biological event. To make it worse, this was written in 2002...a lot has changed in 18 years, but is it all for the better? Hard to say, we almost need a Demon in the Freezer #2 to update us on the current state of affairs post-COVID. I can't recommend this book enough to someone interested in this topic. If you haven't read about Smallpox or Anthrax - read this!
    • 4/5
      So why haven't they destroyed the last of the smallpox stores? Distrust is a dangerous thing.
    • 4/5
      A great book, as for small pox, it'll scare the living hell out of you. It jumps around a bit and considering how easy it is to read, you just have to stick with it.
    • 4/5
      2002 non-fiction about biological weapon agents smallpox and anthrax, and the American governmental defensive measures toward them. The book is mostly an account of the Smallpox Eradication Program, a discussion about smallpox’s status as a potential bioterrorism agent, and the controversy about the remaining samples. Demon in the Freezer is very much a product of its time, having been published in 2002, just after the anthrax attacks. I really thought this book was going to be about anthrax. In fact, the first few chapters and last couple chapters were about the post-9/11 anthrax attacks. But what this book was actually about was small pox. Having been born in the eighties, I never knew just how terrifying smallpox really could be -- I mean, it’s one of the most virulent diseases on the planet, so lots of people got it, right? Holy crap, smallpox make ebola look like small potatoes. Consider me educated.
    • 4/5
      Concerning my reading, it is style over substance that I go for. If there happens to be beauty in both, I rate highly. This book was definitely substance first, style last. But the substance was so substantial it still gets a tick from me.The Demon in the Freezer is in this case (I wonder how many cases of there being demons in the freezer there are?) the smallpox virus. Officially eradicated in 1979, scientists kept specimens of the virus alive and frozen. With the increasing threat of terror invasions of the biological weapon type, there is now a school of thought that says all stocks of the virus should be destroyed so that it cannot fall into the wrong hands and be used against human populations. This virus is not a nice one. You can get if from someone easily and unknowingly before they even know they have it, and for ten days after they show the first flu-like symptoms. Its spread in today's interwoven societies would be exponential. You die in pain and slowly if you are the one in three that it is likely to kill. This is all before the notion that stocks of the smallpox virus are probably held in freezers in Iraq, North Korea and other states of questionable repute. That they could be being modified on a genetic level to resist vaccines is of great concern to scientists and governments around the world.Concerns about other biological weapons are discussed here too, in particular anthrax which was distributed post 9/11 via the mail in the US and proved to be both deadly to those who were exposed to its spores, and very costly to clean up after.On a more lighthearted note, my favourite part of the book follows: "Pox hunters have so far discovered mousepox, monkeypox, skunkpox, pigpox, goatpox, camelpox, cowpox, pseudo-cowpox, buffalopox, gerbilpox, several deerpoxes, chamoispox, a couple of sealpoxes, turkeypox, canarypox, pigeonpox, starlingpox, peacockpox, sparrowpox, juncopox, mynahpox, quailpox, parrotpox and toadpox........There's dolphinpox, penguinpox, two kangaroopoxes, raccoonpox and quokkapox........snakepox and crocpox."But fear not, only the animal in the title gets the virus just as smallpox only uses humans as its host. This was a fast and fantastic read.
    • 4/5
      I purchased this book for myself in e-book format to see how they work; quite well much to my surprise, at least in the RocketBook format.

      Preston, author of the virus-based thriller Hot Zone examines the factual biological threat of smallpox, otherwise known as variola. There are poxviruses that exist in almost all animal species, and one apparently crossed the species barrier several thousand years ago to become the most devastating killer of humans, superseding the plague by far. It's also one of the first diseases to have been officially completely eliminated from the world, except for two known storage points: one in the United States, the other in Russia.

      Preston suggests that several rogue nations could be working on it as a biological weapon. The vaccinations most of us older folks received years ago are no longer immunizing, lasting only about five years.

      The genome, i.e. letters of the genetic code, of variola is one of the longest of any virus and it has about two hundred genes. This complexity is used by the virus to defeat the immune system of the human host. The AIDS virus, in contrast, has only ten genes. "HIV is a bicycle, while smallpox is a Cadillac loaded with tailfins and every option in the book."

      Preston is certain that smallpox will again be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by terrorists. The virus floats through the air, traveling like lightning from victim to victim, a biological chain reaction. Studies done in a hospital in Meschede, Germany where a smallpox victim - he had arrived with the disease from outside the country - had been taken in 1970 showed that people could be infected even when they were outside the quarantine zone; it traveled much as smoke would throughout a building, even traveling into windows from the outside. The only way to stop it was massive vaccinations, which prevented the virus from moving outside the area.

      The current vaccine produces serious adverse effects in a small number of those who receive it. It also might not be potent against a reengineered smallpox. Researchers have shown how easily the mousepox strain can be changed to become lethal to mice that normally are immune to it, - so easy, that an expert said a bright high school student could do it using publicly available information.

      Conventional wisdom was that smallpox could not be transmitted into other non-human animals. It would be useful to induce the disease into other primates to be able to test newer forms of a vaccine. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that barrier was crossed May 31, 2001 when four monkeys were infected with one billion particles of smallpox virus. Two died. For the first time in history, a non-human animal had been infected with smallpox.

      Smallpox had been declared completely eradicated in 1980, thanks to a heroic effort by the World Health Organization. Quite a controversy has surrounded the maintenance of the smallpox virus that has been kept potent in two storage facility freezers: one at the CDC in Atlanta, the other at a former germ-warfare facility in Siberia. The Russians had loaded tons of the virus into warheads during the eighties - thanks, guys - but these were to have been destroyed. Preston thinks that small amounts have been secreted out of the country into the hands of terrorist groups.

      Preston interviewed Russian and American bioweapon experts who sit around and blithely discuss how easy it would be to create Armageddon, perhaps just by using a garden sprayer to deliver the disease particles. Air travel and constant movement around the planet would do the rest. Perhaps Bush should think about shutting down airports. Time to resurrect train travel, anyway.

      Preston mixes anecdotes with science and detail to create a frightening view of a possible future, one much more lethal than nuclear war.

      Just forget about sleeping if you read this book.
    • 5/5
      " A True Story " = In one of the greatest feats of modern science, the devastating smallpox virus, the worst disease in human history, was purged from the planet in 1979. In the interest of research, two stores were kept: one at the (CDC) Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and one at a Russian virology institute. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. Iraq and North Korea are almost certainly hiding illegal stocks of the deadly virus.
    • 4/5
      A frightful glimpse into the history of small pox. It has now been eradicated from nature but it still lives on in government controlled labs and research facilities. No one knows how much small pox exists in the world or who has it. No one knows how much research is being done to turn it into an efficient weapon of war. What we do know is that it's fairly easy to engineer and even easier to disperse.A downright chilling look at the potential of biological warfare to completely destroy life as we know it.
    • 4/5
      Not for the faint-hearted. During the descriptions of several of the diseases profiled in this book, mainly small pox, I had to stop reading. Small pox is more evil than I thought reality could ever be, and Preston makes that abundantly clear with vivid detail. It’s not a straight-forward modern history of the disease, instead Preston intentionally (and overtly) withholds information at times to allow for well-timed big reveals. I’m sure that works for some readers, but as someone who was most interested in learning the current state of small pox, I found it annoying at his apparent inability to summarize details outside his tightly controlled narrative.
    • 4/5
      Richard Preston first got our attention with The Hot Zone, and I will say this about him: he is a terrific story teller. This true account of smallpox virus and anthrax bacteria may leave a couple of loose ends around (it was written in 2002, before the anthrax case came to its unsatisfying conclusion, and you get the sense that he didn't really know what to do about the smallpox story), but that doesn't keep you from turning the pages late into the night. Partly because it's just darn hard to go to sleep, given all the new things you have to worry about! Well told, and scary.