Virus hunter
A New York TimesNotable Book The man who led the battle against Ebola in The Hot Zoneteams up with the bestselling co-author of Mind Hunterto chronicle his extraordinary thirty-year career fighting deadly viruses. For three decades, Dr. C. J. Peters was on the front lines of our biological battle against "hot" viruses around the world. In the course of that career, he learned countless lessons about our interspecies turf wars with infectious agents. Called in to contain an outbreak of deadly hemorrhagic fever in Bolivia, he confronted the despair of trying to save a colleague who accidentally infected himself with an errant scalpel. Working in Level 4 labs on the Machupo and Ebola viruses, he saw time and again why expensive high-tech biohazard containment equipment is only as safe as the people who use it. Because of new, emerging viruses, and the return of old, "vanquished" ones for which vaccines do not exist, there remains a very real danger of a new epidemic that could, without proper surveillance and early intervention, spread worldwide virtually overnight. And the possibility of foreign countries or terrorist groups using deadly airborne viruses--the poor man's nuclear arsenal--looms larger than ever. High-octane science writing at its best and most revealing, Virus Hunteris a thrilling first-person account of what it is like to be a warrior in the Hot Zone.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2012–2015years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Depends on what you're interested in. Do you want something heavy and factual?
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Epic-History-Medicine-Commerce/d...
Do you want a first-hand account?
http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Char...
http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Naked-Mind-Field-Mullis/dp/067...
Any particular area of science that interests you?
Also, if you want something non-fictional and thrilling, look into accounts of epidemology.
http://www.amazon.com/Virus-Hunter-Thirty-Battling-Viruses/d...
Also, I read alot of medical thrillers which are fiction by the author Robin Cook. There are many true facts about science mixed in so you might want to consider that.
- Some I've recently finished...
Epidemiology-focused
- Virus Hunter - C.J. Peters with Mark Olshaker
- Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science - Richard Preston
- Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries - Molly Caldwell Crosby
- The Woman With a Worm in Her Head and Other True Stories of Infectious Disease - Pamela Nagami
General good nonfiction
- Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin - Norah Vincent
- Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb - Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
- Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes and Autism - Ron Suskind
Fiction
- Funny Once - short story collection by Antonya Nelson (sad, weird, but very good)
- It's Kind of a Funny Story - Ned Vizzini
- Backward Compatible - Sarah Daltry
Also definitely recommend the Magic 2.0 trilogy by Scott Meyer (starting with Off to Be the Wizard).
