The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Preston
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $4.93
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Avg. Customer Rating:  479 reviews
Sales Rank: 2185
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0385495226
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.57
EAN: 9780385495226
ASIN: 0385495226
Publication Date: June 15, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Brand New! Immediate Shipment!
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Amazon.com
The dramatic and chilling story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a surburban Washington, D.C. laboratory, with descriptions of frightening historical epidemics of rare and lethal viruses. More hair-raising than anything Hollywood could think of, because it's all true.
Product Description
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the
appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.
From the Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 474 more reviews...
 This Story Is A Nightmare... August 12, 2008
Reading this book was a downer, a bummer, and was the only book in 35 years of reading that gave me nightmares, made worse by the fact that it's a true story.
As a medical professional, I read it to the end and it's the ONLY part of science that I'm shamed. Research on hundreds of thousands of aminals 'sacrificed' for observation, research, 'safety', theory.
If u want to read about the extensive confinement, torture and massacre of thousands of healthy, intellegent aminals, go ahead and read it.
It's not the book that is sad, it's the story that's pathetic.
No cure was found, the source of the 'disease' wasn't found.
Robert Redford called the book a 'thriller'. It is a B-U-M-M-E-R...
There's no happy ending, no highlights, not even a smile to be found.
It starts with death and goes downhill from there. A roller coaster ride into muck. The roller coaster crashes and takes peoples' conscience with it. It's a legal massacre of the aminal kingdom with no reparations, replinishment or consideration of consequence.
-ay-
 Good, but got a little old and redundant July 23, 2008
Well I read the first part of this book really fast, I couldn't put it down, but by the middle of the book I felt like the author was repeating everything over and over again. He was also going into such lengthy details about the environment, which I found stale and boring. I would skip and few pages then read on.. So I wouldn't really recommend this book, I was hoping for so much more..
 Good for Non-Fiction July 18, 2008
This book was required summer reading for me, and at first I was a little bit hesitant to pick up a non-ficiton book. I usually gravitate more towardes horror novels. However, this book suprised and delighted me. It read like a cohesive fiction novel, it didn't throw too many facts or figures or scientific jargan at you. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in viruses or any type of science field.
A True Horror Story June 30, 2008
Fascinated by anything related to virology, I love this book. As a account of true events, it is a page turner. It does not read like the stereotypical stuffy non-fiction book. I could not put it down. I felt I was right there in the labs with the protagonists. I almost felt as though I would come down with the virus just by reading about it.
the hot zone June 22, 2008
"The Hot Zone" was recommended to me by my A & P teacher, & I bought it right away because I am fascinated by viruses. This book reads like a thriller, yet the story is complete fact. Richard Preston is not a scientist himself but has a PhD in English, so he is able to make this esoteric subject (the Marburg & Ebola viruses) accessible to the masses. Along the way, he created a book that I could not put down.
Preston went just deep enough into the science of viruses to scare me, yet everything he says is certainly plausible. This book may read like a thriller, but the story is not sensationalist. Besides exposing the 1989 Ebola Reston outbreak in Maryland, Preston gives the reader interesting background on a few of the more well known cases of Marburg & Ebola Sudan & Zaire. Unexpectedly, this book offers a very real picture of the cruelties of animal testing & the can of worms we humans have opened up as a result of our constant meddling with the ecosystem. Preston ponders that viruses (HIV included) could be nature's way of fighting back against humans who insist on poaching & bulldozing rain forests. He has a valid point.
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