Crisis in the Red Zone
The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and of the Outbreaks to Come
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- $179.00
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- $179.00
Descripción editorial
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gripping account of the deadliest Ebola epidemic yet, an urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses, and a tribute to the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us—from the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone
“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
In this taut and suspenseful medical drama, Richard Preston chronicles the 2013–2014 Ebola outbreak, in which we saw for the first time the specter of Ebola jumping continents, crossing the Atlantic, and infecting people in America. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in North America, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire, and posed questions about the charged ethical dilemma over who should, and did, receive the rare doses of an experimental treatment with the power to save lives.
Preston tells an unforgettable story that explains the eruption of new, lethal viruses into the human species—viruses that have the power to infect anyone, anywhere. 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, and a stark warning of viral outbreaks to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Preston follows up his 1994 book The Hot Zone with another terrifying real-life thriller about the threat of viruses in this case, Ebola. He leavens the subject's essential grimness with inspiring portrayals of men and women who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives battling the virus's resurgence in West Africa in 2013 and 2014. They include Lisa Hensley, an American researcher and single mother who chooses to travel to Africa to offer what help she can, and Humarr Khan, a physician who, even before the Ebola outbreak, had already decided to stay in his native Sierra Leone and fight Lassa, another virus endemic in West Africa, rather than pursue a lucrative American career. Along with character sketches, Preston delves into the moral complexities that can arise in disease research, in this case when an apparent miracle cure dubbed wow "because everybody was typing Wow in their emails" yields amazing results in monkeys and the researchers must decide whether to experiment with its efficacy for humans. His concluding sections establish why this story remains relevant, as the Ebola outbreak is a cautionary tale of what could happen if a similar mutated supervirus reached cities. This nonfiction page-turner will both educate and scare readers.
