Deadly Feasts - Hardcover

Rhodes, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684823608 ISBN 13: 9780684823607

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

In a non-fiction narrative that reads like a medical thriller, Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. A new Afterword assesses what needs to be done to prevent a fatal epidemic."An Upton Sinclair-ish look inside the modern meat industry....Rhodes tells this medical detective story beautifully". -- John Schwartz, The Washington Post

About this title

Review:

Fans of The Hot Zone will find Deadly Feasts irresistible. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes delivers a gripping account of a disease and its discovery. If you thought the Ebola virus was bad news, check out transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). Always fatal, they can lurk in a body for years before emerging to claim their victims by turning their brains to slush. At least Ebola sickens quickly and occasionally spares a life. Rhodes exaggerates when he calls this a "new plague" in his subtitle, but TSEs are to blame for the real-world disaster of mad cow disease in Britain. And they do pose a genuine threat to human life.

Review:

"A vivid and engrossing account of a scientific saga worthy of Paul de Kruff's Microbe-Hunters."-Beryl Lieff Benderly, San Jose Mercury News

"Classic medical detective story."- George Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

"An Upton Sinclair-ish look inside the modern meat industry...Rhodes tells this medical detective story beautifully."-John Schwartz, The Washington Post

"[Rhodes] is a wonderful storyteller, Deadly Feasts is a great mystery story."-Nancy Schapiro, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Deadly Feasts is a breezy, immensely readable account....It is a splendid description of the process by which scientific knowledge is advanced."-Claudia Winkler, The Weekly Standard

"In the science literature of Armageddon, Deadly Feasts is in a class by itself....Rhodes is able to make hard science come alive."-Peter Collier, Chicago Tribune

"Deadly Feasts is a book to be read and pondered carefully -- and perhaps acted on -- possibly before eating one's next hamburger."-Oliver Sacks, The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684823608
• ISBN 13: 9780684823607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259