An insider's look at the hot zones of the world ( )

I wanted to read this book because CJ Peters was the man who "sniffed" the vial containing Ebola virus in the book "The Hot Zone." While that was a foolish act, his many years of experience working with the various government agencies educate the populace on infectious diseases and epidemiology. ( )

Mildly interesting biography of 3 decades of experience: The maps of South America & Africa were confusing - they put a lot of effort into identifying most of the Countries, but many of them didn't feature in the text, so why give the Geography lesson?The 20 photographs were of some interest, but there was only one photo of a patient with symptoms, and only one of a virus - I wish there'd been more of those and less of head & shoulders like having a meal and daughter's high-school graduation? Great disappointment - absolutely no Index! The penultimate Chapter 11 gives a prediction of Avian Flu originating in Thailand - just what we're getting news about this month (Jan 2004) - but this book was published in 1997. Given the age of the book, its probably not surprising that Chapter 12 is very out of date (as in 'wrong') regarding its description of BSE (Mad Cow Disease) & CJD. Was it necessary that we be told what the wife of the 'ghost writer' does for a living?