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A review by alisonburnis
Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
3.5
Another book about Ebola! This is Preston’s exploration of the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa (the Makona Triangle, where Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia meet). It’s not as good as The Hot Zone, about the 1989 Reston Ebola outbreak - but it’s a lot scarier, and a lot more pertinent. It was also published in 2019, and there’s a section at the end on how we should prepare for an outbreak of a novel virus and what that might look like: schools closed, hospitals overrun, people avoiding stores, orders to stay home…
Anyway, the narrative here took a little while to get the tension going, which felt odd, but after a mid-book flashback to the 1976 emergence of Ebola, it picked up. The stories told were tragic and terrifying, and also many many lessons wait in this book. I feel overwhelmingly sad when I think about how we haven’t learned a thing. But it was really helpful to read. People kept referring to the Ebola scare at work, and I had no context or memory of it, blessedly.
Anyway, the narrative here took a little while to get the tension going, which felt odd, but after a mid-book flashback to the 1976 emergence of Ebola, it picked up. The stories told were tragic and terrifying, and also many many lessons wait in this book. I feel overwhelmingly sad when I think about how we haven’t learned a thing. But it was really helpful to read. People kept referring to the Ebola scare at work, and I had no context or memory of it, blessedly.