With its crisp language and pacing, THE HOT ZONE reads like an expert thriller novel, making its reality that much more horrifying. Not for the faint-hearted, this book will likely alter the way you view viruses and epidemics.

I highly recommend this book for a general adult readership. (Teenagers under 16 may not be able to handle the highly disturbing descriptions Preston provides.) If you haven't read this book before, you should, especially now in this time of bioterrorism and global travel.


A Tale of Horror   March 25, 2003
 35 out of 36 found this review helpful

Richard Preston is not a horror novelist, but this will be one of the scariest stories you've ever read. The cause of all this terror is from little beasts that are only microns in size, filoviruses. "Hot Zone" discusses four of these viruses, Marburg, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Reston. I first came across Preston in his New Yorker article, "Crisis in the Hot Zone" which is basically the cliff notes to this book. It piqued my interest and eventually led to me reading this book.

Everyone knows that they should be afraid of Ebola. The Zaire strand only kills 90% of those it infects, in just a matter of day, in the worst way imaginable. Filoviruses are hemorrhagic viruses, causing those unfortunate enough to be infected to crash and bleed out. Preston goes into grisly detail about how these viruses work, and the symptoms that occur in humans. He traces the history of these viruses from their discovery. These are just set up for his main topic, the discovery of Ebola in Washington D.C. A monkey house in Reston Virginia is full of dying monkeys that apparently are infected with Ebola. Preston tracks down the mystery behind this domestic infection.

This book does bring up an all-important point; we are only an airplane ride away from the outbreak of a pandemic. It is very possible that a highly contagious disease may break out and cover the earth in a matter of days leaving a large portion of the population dead, making the premise behind Stephen King's novel "The Stand" not so far fetched after all. These filoviruses are very interesting, and Preston reveals them in such a way that you want to know more about them. The only hint I have to offer is, to avoid Intern's Disease, don't read this when you have a cold.


WAY Over-the-top!   June 12, 2000
 28 out of 50 found this review helpful

I kept putting off reading "The Hot Zone", even though I study single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses, and continued to hear references to it. I finally bought a copy and was rather shocked. Ebola haemorrhagic fever is a very frightening disease, and the hundreds of people who have died from it since it was identified in 1976 (along with its sister virus Marburg which was identified in 1967) suffered horribly. Preston does these victims and their families a disservice by discussing Ebola haemorrhagic fever in sensationalistic and cartoonish prose. The story the book tells is both tragic and fascinating, but from most of the reviews here, one would gather that it is just a gruesome shock-fest. Just because Ebola virus is native to the forests of Africa does not mean that its victims should also be treated as distant, exotic characters in a horror picture. I'm not trying to be politcally correct by saying this. Even Preston's descriptions of the scientists involved in the study BL-4 agents feel as though they were written by Ayn Rand on steroids. I give this book 2 stars because I do think it has helped inform a number of readers about the continuing threat of infectious diseases and has probably led some of them to more detailed and down-to-earth works like Laurie Garrett's or William Close's. If you have read these works, though, you'll have trouble wading through "The Hot Zone".


Buyer Beware......   November 1, 2000
 15 out of 16 found this review helpful

Well, it all depends on what you are looking for. "The Hot Zone" was the first book I read on this subject and like many other readers I was intriged and facinated. But then I started to branch out and read more about the subject and I realized that this book cannot be taken at face value. If you want an accurate description of these viruses I would suggest "Virus Hunters of the CDC" by Joseph B. McCormick M.D. and Susan Fisher-Hoch or "Ebola" by William T. Close. These books are written by the people have actually worked with the viruses and the victims they attack. These two books are first hand expieriences...not second or third hand information. I would compare "The Hot Zone" to the TV show Hard Copy. It does get most of the story across, but it alters it to make it more marketable. My main gripe with it is that countless times Mr. Preston mentions "liquifiying" of bodily organs. This is completely inaccurate. It paints a good picture and had good shock value, but these virus don't need it. They are shocking enough on their own, they don't need to be embelished. Once again, a good story book (although how it's passed off as non-fiction I'll never know), but if you want acuracy I would suggest you look a little further.


Some Hot Stuff   August 12, 2002
 14 out of 16 found this review helpful

This was an interesting account of a biological incident at a monkey house near Washington DC, along with plenty of background information about the Marburg and Ebola viruses. I didn't mind the redundancy about which others have complained; the repetition of some of the information about viral functions prompted retention, along with stirring the imagination as to the effects of a killer virus.

After reading the book, I performed some web searches an found several sites advertising hiking excursions to Mt. Elgon's Kitum Cave in Africa, which is believed to be he home of the Ebola/Marburg strains, though it's presently unknown which animal is the natural host. Let me tell you, if you are sufficiently insane to visit Kitum Cave after reading The Hot Zone, then you are living proof of Darwin In Action.

I liked the author's analogy about fatal viruses, such as Ebola and HIV, acting at the Earth's own antibodies, protecting the environment from encroachment by humans in places where the Earth doesn't want humans to be fiddling with things. Invasions of the deep rain forests and encounters with fatal biological agents therein are warnings for humans to stay away.

Have everyone in your family read The Hot Zone, so that next time someone gets sick you will have all sorts of terminology to throw around the dinner table -- extreme amplification, crash-and-bleed-out and other delightful descriptions about the effects of disease on humans. Enjoy.