CRISIS IN THE RED ZONE

A sequel of sorts to the landmark bestseller The Hot Zone (1994), this time with a focus on the 2013-2014 Ebola outbreak in the forests of West Africa.

“Viruses are the undead of the living world, the zombies of deep time,” writes New Yorker contributor Preston (Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science, 2008, etc.). In this richly detailed narrative, he plunges readers into the “horrifying chaos” of overcrowded field-hospital wards in Sierra Leone, where “disoriented, infected patients” wander while scientists across the world scurry to identify a contagious disease for which there is no treatment or cure. First detected in 1976 near Zaire’s Ebola River, where it jumped across species into humans, the virus returned with deadly force in the 2013 outbreak recounted here, infecting 30,000 villagers and killing 11,000. Moreover, it posed the nightmare threat of spreading into populous cities. Preston tells engrossing human stories of doctors and patients while providing a clear understanding of Ebola, from its genetic code and mutations to its terrible impacts on victims (fever, paralysis, diarrhea, etc.). In scene after scene, the author vividly re-creates the drama: Villagers throw rocks at epidemiologists during a burial, nearly killing them. A teenage herbalist eerily predicts the deaths of Ebola nurses. French and German scientists struggle to identify the virus. A doctor forgets himself and gets infected while trying to save a child. Cambridge scientists stare at mutations in the Ebola code and try to understand what they are seeing. Doctors are in short supply, nurses abandon hospitals, and villagers text message rumors about “white foreigners” in space suits experimenting on people. “Many didn’t believe in this thing called Ebola,” writes Preston, who also provides sharp portraits of virologists like Lisa Hensley, a longtime Ebola researcher at Maryland’s Fort Detrick, and Sheik Umar Khan, declared a “national hero” for leading Sierra Leone’s fight against Ebola, who contracted the disease himself, sparking debate over whether he should be given an untested experimental drug.

An exhaustive and terrifying story of viral mayhem that will rivet readers.