Hot Zone Reflection

I recently finished the nonfiction book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and I am surprised to say that I found the book hard to put down. Because of time constraints, I was almost forced to read the book quickly, but unlike most required reading, I actually did not mind being under pressure to finish reading. The Hot Zone really presented some new information to me that I had never thought about before. It made me ask myself “what if?” throughout the entire book and made the viruses discussed in the book a lot more real to me.

There is really nothing to argue about with this book. Since it is a non-fiction piece, there is no questioning the validity of the information. I think the book made me realize for the first time how vulnerable human beings are. I think the reason it made me think so much is that it struck so close to home. Most of the time people hear about exotic diseases, it is never effecting the United States nearly as much as other parts of the world. It actually scared me a little bit, and every time I had to put down the book, I felt like I was still in a Biohazard Level 4 lab. The book made me a bit paranoid to touch things with a cut on my hand, and I found myself washing my hands a lot more often. I think it was because I was so immersed in the book. I think Preston is a very effective writer, because it has been a long time since I have read a book as gripping and real as this one.

The subject of the text has to deal with viruses they call “hot agents”. A hot agent is a virus that has been known to have a high mortality rate in humans, and is not safe to handle or work with without a biohazard space suit. One of these hot agents makes its way from Africa to the Philippines and finally to the United States by way of monkey. A monkey seller located in Reston, Virginia, a suburb of Washington D.C., imported some diseased monkeys form the Philippines and they had an outbreak of a Biohazard level 4 virus in the monkey house. The U.S. army and the Center for Disease Control were put in charge of the operation to sterilize and euthanize the monkeys in a controlled environment in order to keep to public safe.

There are really not many opinions in this text because of the nature of nonfiction writing. I would think that most nonfiction authors try to include as little opinion in their works as possible in order to deliver a historically accurate read. In order to make the book more credible, Preston flew all over the country in order to interview eyewitnesses and participants. As a reader, I was appreciative of Preston while reading. I appreciated the fact that he did fly a lot of places for interviews, and that he did so much work to write a book. It made the reading experience more personable because I was able to relate better to real life people, knowing their background.

Another thing that made the book more believable was the act that he used his interviews and put quoted directly into the book instead of writing about the events from the interviews without any quotes. Even though he did was not able to use his own words when using the quotes, he still had a lot of pages with no dialogue and just description. Preston’s word choice and style really help the reader understand what is going on in the book. Even somebody with no biological or scientific background would be able to pick up this book and almost fully understand what happened throughout the book. It is amazing how well Preston explains certain parts of the text. I went from knowing nothing about hot agents to knowing a fair amount without doing any research.

I really enjoyed the book and the subject of the book. I think Richard Preston is an extremely talented science writer, and would not hesitate to read another one of his science related books, fiction or nonfiction.