The current Ebola scare and the growing story of its mismanagement made me remember two excellent books:
- The Hot Zone, the nonfiction thriller about Ebola that I found highly disturbing in middle school. For an even scarier read, try its spiritual sequel, The Demon in the Freezer (in which Preston details how much bioweapons grade Smallpox the former Soviet Union may have misplaced). I don’t know if Preston invented the nonfiction biomedical pageturner, but he was extremely good at it.
- The Stand. Stephen King’s magnum opus was re-released uncut and unedited (1200 pages!) in 2012. Viral apocalypse literature at its finest. It’s no spoiler to say that the government does neither a great nor honest job when faced with a deadly virus.
SPEAKING OF: Richard Preston reprises his old role to breakdown the current Ebola outbreak in the New Yorker.