Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting and well-written -- with lessons for today
Review: This book isn't just a history. Regis's story of the U.S. and British biological warfare program leaves the reader very relieved upon reaching the part about how the program was abandoned when the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 was signed. Unfortunately, the next part of his book discusses how the USSR responded to that agreement -- which it signed -- by launching an all-out biological warfare program that created weaponized stocks of superlethal smallpox, bubonic plague, etc. Those stocks still exist and threaten the world today. Nor were the Russians the only violators. Apparently, once the US abandoned the field, other nations concluded that it had become possible for them to obtain a decisive advantage by doing research; before, they had assumed that the US would promptly match any developments, preventing them from achieving any advantage. A devastating example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, and something to remember when other calls for relinquishing technology appear.
Rating: 
Summary: Well researched, but ends with a unwarranted confidence
Review: This is a good book for facts. Unfortunately, it is way out of date. Considering how fast technology is moving, what would lead someone to look back 20 years in the past and use that, as-is, for projecting forward? Reality is going to bite us, hard.
Rating:
Summary: Clear, comprehensive, compulsively readable
Review: This is a superior account of a difficult subject-biological weapons. It shows exhaustive research, careful weighing of evidence, and a balanced assessment of these horrible weapons. It is also a great read as Regis finds a compelling, surprising, and at times heroic narrative line in a mountain of government documents and assembles a clear history of what had been fragmentary bits of information. Statements by anyone claiming to know anything about bioweapons need to be checked against this clear, comprehensive, compulsively readable book.
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