Rating: 
Summary: Informative...
Review: The Demon in the Freezer is the informative and interesting tale of the eradication of smallpox. The book describes the techniques used to rid the world of this horrible disease and its eventual location in just two high security freezers worldwide. The reader is introduced to some of the most brilliant minds in science and reads about their reactions as their worst fears come true. It is revealed that smallpox, "the demon", may be present in more than two locations and if it were to be "set loose", its consequences would be devastating.
While The Demon is an informative book full of science and medical discovery, it includes too much unneeded description to be extraordinarily thrilling. Do we really need to know what color sweater Karl Heinz Richter was wearing on the 16th of January, 1970? Will that really add to our knowledge of bioweapons and scientific triumphs? No.
This book was meant to be a doomsday type of thriller. It was meant to make the reader think more about what is really going on around them. In reading this book, I did gain a great deal of knowledge about smallpox and other occurances in that area of science. However, I'm not necessarily more concerned with the prospects of it "getting loose" and killing everyone any more than I was before. I would suggest this book for anyone interested in the topics of medical science and biological weapons, however, this book is not necessarily for everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: A slight down-grade, but nonetheless incredible
Review: The Demon in the Freezer is the third of Richard Preston's "Black Biology" books. It was his second non-fiction story involving bioterrorism and viruses. Although I have to admit that the Hot Zone was indeed a better book, I applaud Preston for his tremendous effort in writing The Demon in the Freezer. The book has a profusion of information regarding poxviruses and various sub-strains of this sub-microscopic killer. The book effectively intertwined biology, ethics, history, and war. The Demon in the Freezer, in a nutshell, is an interesting piece of work that should be read by all those who are uneducated in the field of global politics regarding bio-warfare.
Rating:
Summary: The Demonâ?¦
Review: This is the sort of book that you just cannot put down. I started reading it on a long car ride home from Portland and was hooked immediately. After telling a co-worker that I had enjoyed Preston's “THE HOT ZONE†she recommended this book as a follow-up. While I did enjoy it, I found the chapters about Anthrax boring in comparisson to the terror of smallpox and the fascinating story of its eradication. “THE HOT ZONE†and Laurie Garrett's “THE COMING PLAGUE†(which I am currently in the middle of) are better, but this is an enjoyable read that is full of facts ot keep biology/pathology buffs hooked but not bogged down with technical jargon.
Rating:
Summary: The Demon⿦
Review: This is the sort of book that you just cannot put down. I started reading it on a long car ride home from Portland and was hooked immediately. After telling a co-worker that I had enjoyed Preston's “THE HOT ZONE†she recommended this book as a follow-up. While I did enjoy it, I found the chapters about Anthrax boring in comparisson to the terror of smallpox and the fascinating story of its eradication. “THE HOT ZONE†and Laurie Garrett's “THE COMING PLAGUE†(which I am currently in the middle of) are better, but this is an enjoyable read that is full of facts ot keep biology/pathology buffs hooked but not bogged down with technical jargon.
Rating: 
Summary: A Cytokine Storm
Review: Those of us who are old enough remember getting a shot in the arm when we were kids, a shot that made a huge sore that hurt like hell and left us with a quarter-sized scar that has stuck with us for life. These were our smallpox vaccinations, and for most of us, this was just another vaccination in a series of vaccinations we had to get because our parents made us. We later learned that entire American Indian populations had been wiped out by smallpox once the Europeans had introduced it to the new world. Smallpox hadn't existed in the Western Hemisphere before-Indians had no natural resistance to it-so they suffered horribly from the disease. This is what we were taught, but we were left with the impression that smallpox was really of little concern to us. We weren't taught that smallpox had been a devastating scourge of mankind for thousands of years, and that for many, contracting smallpox meant a slow, painful death.
Richard Preston has written another great biological who-done-it in the same swift, hard-hitting style of The Hot Zone. The Demon in the Freezer is constructed like a suspense novel; it reads very well, and the story moves along at a good clip while exposing or documenting the bio-warfare research surrounding smallpox. Anthrax and Ebola even make an appearance, their own stories prove to be disconcertingly woven within the smallpox saga.
In contrast to the Bio-weaponeers are the Eradicators, those teams of docs and biologists who stamped out smallpox in the 1970s. Their monumental work is all but forgotten by the lay public, and they never received any awards or prizes for their work. I think that one of Preston's main motivations for writing this book was probably to provide some recognition for the courage and determination of the Smallpox Eradication Teams. Their work has saved 2 million lives a year since the 1970s-they should at least have a lot of children named after them out there in the world.
Bacteria and viruses, bioengineering, weaponized strains, terrorists-this is really scary stuff, but I choose not to be afraid. If I ever come across one of these bio-weapons guys though, I'm going to [...].
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