NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic
“Crisis in the Red Zone reads like a thriller. That the story it tells is all true makes it all more terrifying.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction
From the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone, now a National Geographic original miniseries . . .
This time, Ebola started with a two-year-old child who likely had contact with a wild creature and whose entire family quickly fell ill and died. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in North America, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire. By the end—as the virus mutated into its deadliest form, and spread farther and faster than ever before—30,000 people would be infected, and the dead would be spread across eight countries on three continents.
In this taut and suspenseful medical drama, Richard Preston deeply chronicles the pandemic, in which we saw for the first time the specter of Ebola jumping continents, crossing the Atlantic, and infecting people in America. Rich in characters and conflict—physical, emotional, and ethical—Crisis in the Red Zone is an immersion in one of the great public health calamities of our time.
Preston writes of doctors and nurses in the field putting their own lives on the line, of government bureaucrats and NGO administrators moving, often fitfully, to try to contain the outbreak, and of pharmaceutical companies racing to develop drugs to combat the virus. He also explores the charged ethical dilemma over who should and did receive the rare doses of an experimental treatment when they became available at the peak of the disaster.
Crisis in the Red Zone makes clear that the outbreak of 2013–2014 is a harbinger of further, more severe outbreaks, and of emerging viruses heretofore unimagined—in any country, on any continent. In our ever more interconnected world, with roads and towns cut deep into the jungles of equatorial Africa, viruses both familiar and undiscovered are being unleashed into more densely populated areas than ever before.
The more we discover about the virosphere, the more we realize its deadly potential. Crisis in the Red Zone is an exquisitely timely book, a stark warning of viral outbreaks to come.
Crisis in the Red Zone is a layman accessible and terrifying real-life narrative about the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and internationally, its development, and eventual (partial) containment. Part detective thriller, part popular science and epidemiology, it captured me from the first page. The author has managed to humanize the headlines we all read at the time and make them more personal and more real.
Released 23rd July 2019 by Random House, it's 400 pages and available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.
He writes well and authoritatively on the science behind the scenes, and about the healthcare professionals and support staff who sacrificed themselves to contain the epidemic. The heroic, almost superhuman efforts of the doctors and nurses made my heart ache for the horrifying loss of life to the merciless enemy that is Ebola.
The book follows a rough timeline with interconnections in the form of the individuals (where known) who were infected by people they came into contact with and infected others in turn. The background research is impressive and seems quite meticulous. There is a glossary, and map info in the final release version of the book.
It's unclear from the publishing info available online, but the eARC I received also has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references. I hope the ebook release version does also. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This book would make a superlative book club selection for non-fiction readers, as well as fans of layman science. It's a terrifying read, even more so because it's non-fiction. It is extremely graphic in places and readers will want to be clear on the fact that the progression of the disease is horrific, resulting in death in approximately 50% of the cases.
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
