Book Review: "The Hot Zone"

Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. First Anchor Books: New York. 1995. (422 pages)

     Reading The Hot Zone was a totally new experience for me. This nonfiction horror story is nowhere near similar to the majority of books that I have read. The fact that it was a true story, yet so horrific and thrilling at the same time, had me flipping the pages faster than I would have ever thought when I picked this book off the shelf. I have not read a variety of nonfiction books this school year, so I thought this would be a good fit because I have an interest in biology. I was pleasantly surprised by how fascinating and scary The Hot Zone was to read.

     Between the balance of biological statistics and information, personal stories from the characters, and the narration, this book never once got old. It doesn’t happen very often that I want to keep reading and reading a nonfiction book, but The Hot Zone proved otherwise. It was told like a chronological story starting when the first virus was discovered through the event of eradicating the deadly disease. This made it a bit easier to follow and to fully understand what was going on, when, and in what location.

     There were many aspects of The Hot Zone that made it a challenging read as well. The book was split into four parts that consisted of chapters within those parts. Many times the chapters would be long so it was difficult to start in the middle of one without having to backtrack to get caught up on previous events or to review some of the scientific terms. Toward the end of the book it became easier as I became familiar with these terms. It was very practical because there was a glossary located in the back of the book that listed all of the scientific vocabulary. In addition to the difficult words, there were a lot of people involved with the “story” that The Hot Zone tells. Because this is nonfiction there weren’t really characters so it was hard to keep all of the people straight when all you could only recognize them by their job titles.

     There are not a lot of books that I could compare to this one just because it is so unique and the fact that I have not experienced a variety of nonfiction books. One that does come to mind is Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem. This is a nonfiction book that focuses on evolution and how anything around us, what we do, or what we eat can affect generations to come thousands of years from now. Both The Hot Zone and Survival of the Sickest have a major theme of biology and science, which is how they are very alike and why I enjoyed reading them. I would certainly recommend The Hot Zone to anyone who is looking for a unique and riveting book to read. It will definitely force you to keep turning the pages.