The Hot Zone : A Terrifying True Story

Rating:
Summary: Great Read!
Review: After months of stuffy old British classics we read THE HOT ZONE by Richard Preston in my sophomore English class. What a breath of fresh air! The book reads like a novel, but is full of fascinating information about ebola. Whether you're a biology buff or just want a good beach read, this is a great book. I highly recommend this(...)

Rating:
Summary: The Bloody Virus
Review: The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a book that follows the events of the Ebola virus, and its sister Marburg. Preston tells about the people infected, as well as the ones who study it. The virus started in Africa and killed many people. It really became a problem when there was an outbreak in the United States. Luckily the virus in the U.S. was not able to infect humans, it was however easily spread through the monkeys. Unlike the other Ebola viruses that spread through contact of bodily fluids, it spreads through the air like the flu virus.
For the most part, the book was well written. However, it was in chronological order and some parts skipped around. It also repeated itself a lot throughout. It is amazing how much detail Preston gave. You can really see the victims lying there, blood pouring from their bodies. You can hear the sound of the body releasing all the internal fluids; it is quite disgusting. If you have a weak stomach, this book is not for you. If you enjoy a book that seems unbelievable, or so amazingly detailed that it could easily be fiction, but is true, this is a great book. The Hot Zone will cause one to enjoy reading; it keeps you guessing, "What happens next?"


Rating:
Summary: Exciting Yet Gut Wrenchingly Scarey
Review: When one of the world's deadliest viruses shows up in a Reston, Virginia monkey house, the CDC and USAMRIID jump into action. The Hot Zone covers the Reston strain of the Ebola virus and the account of the scientists whose job it is to kill it. In this wonderful book, Richard Preston fuses nonfiction with narrative storytelling to create a chilling and horrifying account of Ebola in The Hot Zone. His powerful writing style leaves the reader on the edge of their seats for the entire book. Simultaneously he terrifies the reader about what may happen if Ebola is released, yet still compels them to read on. A warning to the faint hearted, however: this book leaves nothing to be imagined when it comes to describing what happens when the Ebola virus afflicts a human. This book exposes how vulnerable the world is to viruses and plagues. A wonderful line in the book illustrated this by saying "we are a plane ride away from a pandemic." Through grippingly realistic accounts of the plight of Ebola stricken victims, I now know how utterly helpless humans are at the hand of Ebola. Upon completion of this book, I have gained a mixed feeling of fear for the future and a renewed sense of faith in the medical community. A thrilling and horrifying read, I recommend this book to those who are not afraid to peer into the terrifying world of one of the greatest threats to mankind, the Ebola virus, and the struggles of the brave humans whose job it is to protect us from it.

Rating:
Summary: The Hot Zone
Review: Joe(Chicago,IL)

The Hot Zone
"The black vomit blew up around the scope and out of Monet's mouth. Black-and-red fluid spewed into the air, showering down over Dr. Musoke. It struck him in the eyes. It splattered over his white coat and down his chest, marking him with strings of red slime dappled with dark flecks. It landed in his mouth."
The Hot Zone, written by Richard Preston, is deserving of a five-star rating, because in this realistic, intense account of a deadly virus that enters the suburbs of Washington D.C., the reader is compelled to finish the book, despite the graphic nature of the virus' potential to do harm. A fatal, highly infectious virus from the African rain forest unexpectedly appears in the city of Washington D.C. A top secret SWAT team of soldiers and scientists are hired to control and to end the lethal virus that once started from monkeys. In this brilliant book, Preston writes with much description and authority, and occasionally draws the female gender away from the book, but despite the unpleasant text, Preston leaves his readers on the edge of their seats; using details throughout the personal accounts helps the reader to better understand the storyline of this outstanding account.
Through the entire book, description of the details would be the highest strength that Richard Preston applied. With detail, Preston used gore and vivid imagery to show the full picture of one single virus that can destroy 90 percent of its victims. Through the powerful written account, readers can fully imagine the life like crisis that took place in the early 80's. Another great way Preston used description is using military terms. For instance, the most frequent term that was used to add description was "Crash and Bleed Out." Using the term of "Crash and Bleed Out," was so crucial through the book. Every time that phrase was used, the reader would try to imagine what was taking place. To "Crash and Bleed Out" meant to die of shock, with profuse hemorrhages from the orifices of the body.
Using a large extent of detail to describe the nature of the virus can draw an individual away from the book. In some cases, too much detail can disrupt one's whole attitude in relation to the book. Describing blood and death to a point that, which it would become a vulgar manner, could get a negative reaction towards the book itself. "Perhaps the bad smell in the building had nauseated him, because the monkey rooms weren't being cleaned as regularly as usual. He could feel he was about to vomit, and he couldn't find a bucket or anything to throw up into, and it coming on so fast that he couldn't get to the rest room, so he had run outdoors."
In my opinion, using third-person narrative throughout the book helped to produce the life-like events that come to life. If Preston used first-person narrative in the events in the book, readers would look upon the book very differently. First-person narrative would result in less description, different opinions, and less dramatic. This book could only be written in third-person because the numerous stories that were involved.
In conclusion, the book "The Hot Zone," deserves a five-star rating. In my opinion, this book that was published by Richard Preston, would have to be the best book that I ever read. The realistic stories that came to life and the detail that one author can publish; set this book to the top of the charts. By reading this book, one can establish how important detail is, when telling true stories.




Rating:
Summary: It's sad when a good story is ruined by bad writing
Review: I first read The Hot Zone in high school and I loved it. I seem to remember the book being terrifying and exciting. I recently pulled out my copy and read the book again, and I rather wish I hadn't. The story itself -- the spread of the infectious and super-lethal Ebola virus through the population -- is still terrifying. It really makes you realize how fragile the world's health is and how rapidly a plague can spread, particularly in our modern days of air travel.

But a part of me wishes someone else had been the one to tell the tale of Ebola. The whole book is written in incredibly simplistic language, as though it's intended for a junior high audience. For example (quoted from page 180 of my copy): "When Tom Geisbert was a boy, his father had taken him to visit the Institute, and Tom had stared through the heavy glass windows at people in space suits, thinking it would be cool to do that. Now he was doing it, and it made him happy." The entire text is similarly banal; it's as if Preston doesn't believe his collective audience is sufficiently educated to handle complex concepts. It seems condescending; I liken it to an adult going to the doctor and, after receiving a prescription for an antibiotic, getting the explanation, "Here's your medicine to make the icky germs go bye-bye."

I suppose my point is that, while the general story surrounding Ebola is fascinating, I would recommend you read about it in some other source. I don't appreciate it when people "talk down" to me, and I suspect most other people feel the same way.

Rating:
Summary: Sensational True Story !!! Blood !! Gore !!! Life Death !!
Review: The Hot Zone tells the history of ebola and what we know about it. Ebola is a very nasty hemmoragic fever and so, as many people point out, Preston resorts to sensationalism in his descriptions of blood being vomited, sprayed on walls and coming out of victims in every way possible. One strain of the disease, Ebola Zaire, kills 90% of those infected and that is with medical treatment. The book is freaky because the virus is freaky.

The story starts in the late 70's with the first ebola victim, a british man living in north Africa. Preston traces this outbreak of the disease and subsequent cases and chronicles the search for the source of ebola and research on it. The title, The Hot Zone, is a term used to describe areas where research on "hot", or really really bad in layman's terms, viruses are studied. He describes research on site and at the CDC and shows the extent to which the hot zone is kept separate from the rest of the world.

One of the most disturbing events described in the book is the discovery of Ebola Reston in Reston Virginia. This strain of ebola was killing off monkeys in a research facility and because of the mysterious symptoms tissue samples were sent to the CDC. The sample were found to contain ebola. Apparently the strain carried by these monkeys had little effect on people, but an animal handler who had had a cold had antibodies to Ebola Zaire. This demonstrates a close call on a deadly disease moving to a new continent.

The Hot Zone is a good introduction to containment procedures for very contageous diseases for the general public, and makes one think about how fast a disease could spread in our present day world of airplane travel and lots of it. However it is pretty bloody, so not for people who are bothered by that sort of thing.

Rating:
Summary: From Bad, to Worse and Just Keeps Going....
Review: Pure dread. Reading this book is to experience the cold, creeping realization that something so horrible as a disease that literally liquifies its victims from the inside out, while they are still alive, is not only extant in our world but active. Worse yet, nobody understands where the disease comes from or how it spreads. You feel somewhat safe--but at the same time you can't discount the fact that the events set forth actually happened.

The Hot Zone is a reference to the high-level biocontainment laboratories where the most virulent pathogens are studied. The implication is that we live in a Hot Zone amidst an evolutionary battle that the germs are winning. The author tells the story of the discovery and research regarding the Ebola virus; at one point actually taking you into a bat cave thought to be ground zero for the infection. The story is written for effect more than to educate--but I can't think of a more effective way to generate interest in this most serious of subjects.

This is a better thriller than any fiction; don't lend it out, it will get passed around to so many people you will have a hard time getting it back.

Rating:
Summary: Sensationalized but accurate
Review: In comment to the reviewer who read Virus Hunters of the CDC, I have also read both books and would not consider Preston's "inaccurate". Although he does use more adjectives and describe more of the emotional aspect of the disease, I saw no actual discrepencies between the two books. Although I like them both, this one is written in terminology that the everyday person can understand and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Revenge of the rain forest
Review: Imagine a virus that may spread through the air and that causes death at the same rate as the Black Plague during the Middle Ages-within a matter of days. You don't have to imagine it; it's emerged from the rain forest of Africa. In The Hot Zone, Richard Preston covers the filoviruses, Marburg and Ebola, from their effects on victims, how they are spread, and various outbreaks to the horrifying discovery of an Ebola strain right outside the U.S. capital, in Reston, Virginia.

To shatter our complacency, Preston begins The Hot Zone by detailing how a French expatriate, "Charles Monet," undergoes the transformation from healthy human being to a Marburg virus host undergoing extreme amplification within days. His fate is to "crash and bleed out"-to throw up the "black vomit," go into shock, slough intestinal lining, and lose copious amounts of blood from every orifice. This is a true horror story that Poe could not have imagined-yet it is what happens in 50-90 percent of similar cases. There is not only no cure for the filoviruses Marburg and Ebola, there is no treatment.

When the Army and the Centers for Disease Control (inexplicably abbreviated C.D.C.) discover there is an outbreak of an Ebola-like agent in a research monkey holding facility in Reston, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., a team of virologists, veterinarians, physicians, and technicians go into action to identify and isolate the agent, to euthanize the monkeys, and to kill all life within the building.

Preston follows the daily life of Jerry and Nancy Jaax, both Army veterinarians; Dan Dalgard, consulting veterinarian to the company that imported the monkeys from the Philippines; researchers Gene Johnson and Peter Jahrling; intern Tom Geisbert; Colonel C. J. Peters; and others as they develop and execute a strategy for containing the virus (named by co-discoverers Jahrling and Geisbert Ebola Reston) within the monkey facility population and to protect humans from exposure.

Preston plays up the melodrama inherent in the story. He shows the ordinary home life of the Jaaxes, feeding their children, picking them up from school events, and taking care of their pets. In contrast, Nancy dons a "space suit" to work in relatively safety around Level 4 biohazard agents like Marburg and Ebola. Geisbert is a young father who has sacrificed his marriage to his work. Gene Johnson is unable to write about his research and has recurring nightmares about a breech in his gloves. While Army teams are "nuking" the monkey facility, killing and carving up monkeys that host what was believed to be a virulent, deadly hot agent, children play happily at the day-care center down the hill. These juxtapositions of normal life with scenes of people in space suits in fear for their lives from Ebola are intended to add to the horror. While life goes on, a particularly grisly kind of death is only steps away.

I found the attitude of the veterinarians difficult to understand. Dan Dalgard euthanizes monkeys to see if they have simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF). They prove to be healthy. Preston writes, "Sacrificing the monkeys had been a difficult, disgusting, disheartening task"-a sentiment the other veterinarians echo throughout the book. Dalgard notes, ". . . the animals were unusually well fleshed (butterballs), young (less than 5 years), and in prime condition." Yet even as he feels the "disgust" of sacrificing the monkeys, he doesn't question the ethics of working for a company that takes these young, healthy, "butterball" non-human primates away from their natural habitat and family groups and sells them to researchers at a profit-researchers who will most likely inflict pain and suffering on them in the course of research.

Later, to ease the distress of what they are about to do, one of the Army officers tells the young privates sent to assist in killing the monkeys and collecting samples, "These animals gave their lives to science." This may be comforting to humans, but misses the mark. Animals don't give their lives to science; their lives are taken from them involuntarily. Five hundred monkeys need not have been euthanized had they not been artificially housed together, amplifying the filovirus's ability to spread.

At points, Preston sacrifices science for drama. When he writes, "moths and insects" and "a monkey or perhaps a baboon," one assumes he knows that moths are insects and that baboons are monkeys. He refers to monkey canines as "canine fangs" or simply "fangs" to heighten the sense of danger-but zoologists typically would not use "fangs" in this sense. There are occasionally contradictory statements. In the middle, Ebola is shown to travel through air. By the end, this has become, "You have to wonder if Ebola virus can do that or not," Peters notes.

The Hot Zone left me with unanswered questions. Why didn't the virus appear during the 30-day quarantine after the monkeys were imported? Why did Hazleton Research Products import more monkeys from the same source, given the likelihood they would be infected? Why was the second outbreak in the monkey house allowed to burn through the population, causing a cruel death to the monkeys? Why did the company, the Army, and the CDC treat the second outbreak so casually (once they realised Ebola Reston did not affect humans), although today the same filovirus strain requires Level 4 biohazard handling, the same as for the deadly Ebola Zaire strain?

The Hot Zone is a horrifying, compelling story adequately told. In the wake of 9/11/01, it is also a timely one; today, filoviruses are considered bioterrorism threats (although who would want to handle them?). When you're falling asleep in at night, imagine what else lurks among the life of the rain forest-and consider that the forest may yet have the final word.

Diane L. Schirf, 15 November 2004.

Rating:
Summary: Gulp!
Review: Reality is much more frightening that fiction. I literally shivered while reading this.

Warning: You may not want to eat or leave the house for a while after reading this.