The 2013-2014 Ebola epidemic was the deadliest ever--but the outbreaks continue. Now comes a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, an urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses--from the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone, soon to be a National Geographic original miniseries.

In the taut and suspenseful Crisis in the Red Zone, Preston chronicles the recent Ebola epidemic of 2013-2014--the worst outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in history, where we saw for the first time the specter of Ebola jumping continents, crossing the ocean, and killing people in America. Rich in characters and conflict--physical, emotional, and ethical--Crisis in the Red Zone is a total immersion into one of the great medical calamities of our time.

Preston writes of doctors and nurses in the field putting their own lives on the line, government bureaucrats and NGO administrators moving, often fitfully, to try to contain the outbreak, and of the pharmaceutical companies racing to develop drugs to combat the virus. Preston also explores the charged ethical dilemma over who should and did receive the rare experimental doses when they became available.

Crisis in the Red Zone makes clear that the outbreak of 2013-2014 did not mark the end of a disease cycle, but rather is a harbinger of further, more severe outbreaks, and of emerging viruses heretofore unimagined--in any country, on any continent. Now, in our ever more interconnected world, with roads and towns cut deep into the jungles of Africa, viruses both familiar and undiscovered are being unleashed into more densely populated areas than ever before. This time, Ebola's first victim was a two-year-old child who likely contracted the virus by consuming bush meat, and whose entire family quickly fell ill and died. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in the United States, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire.

With the virosphere more deadly than ever, Crisis in the Red Zone is an exquisitely timely book, both intimately chronicling the largest Ebola outbreak in history, and warning of viral outbreaks to come.