Book Review: The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston

The Hot Zone was a major bestseller in 1994, a non-fiction potboiler about an Ebola outbreak that occurred in late 1989 outside of Washington D.C. Richard Preston's writing is pop science at its best, engaging in the science of virology combined with a knack for narrative and structure (based on his New Yorker articles). Preston spares no gory detail on what Ebola does to the human body, such as liquifying human organs. It's also a book about how institutions respond to a potentially devastating crisis and how quickly things can go south. A natural follow-up to Michael Crichton's classic "bio-thriller" The Andromeda Strain, The Hot Zone also takes on a new resonance in the post-Covid era.

Preston begins and ends the books at Kitum Cave in Kenya, the spot where the Marburg and Ebola viruses possibly originated, a beautiful and terrifying place. Written in the context of when the virus that causes AIDS was discovered to have come from monkeys, Ebola had similar origins. The earliest cases of Ebola occurred in the late 1970s in Congo and Sudan, but they were contained. Meanwhile, the spread of AIDS commanded the attention of the West. 

By the 1980s the U.S. Government had their own samples of Ebola and were studying the virus, using monkeys as test subjects. The book follows scientists who worked with viruses on a daily basis in "spacesuits" trying to unlock their secrets. In late 1989, a facility that housed test monkeys saw many become sick. It spread like wildfire through the facility, and many of the workers had been in close contact with the monkeys. If the virus had become airborne, the world might be facing an emergency. 

Without revealing too much, there was obviously no major Ebola outbreak in 1989, a virus with a 90% kill rate. The actual story of the containment is not without drama, raising as many questions as answers. There were turf wars between the Army and CDC, and a serious effort to block out the media to avoid mass panic. The scientists and the military acted with good sense, even bravery at times, from preventing the unthinkable. But as the book illustrates, these situations move quickly and can quickly spiral out of control.

Preston observes at the end:

In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not "like" the idea of five billion humans. . . The earth's immune system, so to speak, has recognized the presence of the human species and is starting to kick in. (406-407)

There's something Lovecraftian about the idea of ancient particles waiting to be unearthed that will bring a horrifying end to humanity, a final reckoning making a mockery of humanity's own hubris. While the Covid pandemic never became an extinction level event, it did provide intelligence on the state of the species. We remain distrustful and irrational but also creative and adaptable to unexpected challenges. We've barely begun to process the long-term effects of the pandemic. Perhaps the viruses are superior to us because they are free of politics, their sole purpose is survival and they've proven quite adept at it when compared to the newcomer primates. 

In 2025, The Hot Zone would be derided in some quarters as deep state propaganda, especially since there's a total crackpot in charge of Health and Human Services who believes letting Bird Flu spread is the best solution, while slashing staff at the CDC. At its heart the book is a tribute to the personnel putting their lives on the line to prevent the spread of disease. At its best, the book is a nostalgic look back at the 1990s when science had yet to become so polarizing. 

There was a bidding war for the movie rights even before the book was published, the film was to be directed by Ridley Scott, with A-list stars Robert Redford and Jodie Foster, but the project collapsed. In 2019, the National Geographic TV network aired a mini-series based on the book to mixed reviews. 

Book Review: When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz

John Ganz, author of the Substack Unpopular Front, has published his first book which explores the political culture of the early 1990s. Primarily focused on the years 1990-1992, Ganz weaved an engaging narrative of how various historical, economic, and cultural forces put America on a political trajectory that helps make sense of the current moment. 

The end of the Cold War had a dramatic impact on domestic politics in America, bringing to bear forces that were suppressed and largely ignored since the 1940s. If Anti-communism was the glue that presented the semblance of bipartisanship of the mid-late 20th Century, the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed new paranoias, and eventually a new type of politics. Ganz focuses on several figures who were harbingers of things to come. 

Ganz's writing skillfully combines biographical sketches, historical context, and intellectual underpinnings. Anxiety and anger over economic forces and demographic change were starting to shift attitudes of the white middle class. An early sign was the rise of David Duke, former Klansman and proud white supremacist, who gained the GOP nomination for Louisiana Governor. A lifelong misfit with antisocial tendencies, Duke emerged as a voice for struggling lower-middle class whites. Ganz deftly explains the corrupt political structures of Louisiana and connects Duke to the populism of 1930s figure Huey Long who also championed lower class whites and ran the state like an autocrat. Although Duke lost his bid for Governor, he predicted that if the economic fortunes of the white middle class continued to erode, his brand of politics would own the future. 

Duke's reactive brand of populist and identity politics trickled their way into the 1992 election. The sitting President George Bush was riding the crest of the First Gulf War victory with a 90% approval rating until the economy went into a gloomy recession. Bush found himself challenged from the Right by Patrick Buchannan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon who specialized in red meat rhetoric. By the 1990s, he had turned against the dogma of free trade and championed a new isolationism. Buchannan raged against "elites" who fleeced hard working Americans and took up the culture war mantle, seeing traditional American values under attack everywhere from public schools to rap music. 

Conservative politics were changing, starting to lean into a radicalism that had always existed, but was oozing into the mainstream. For many, William F. Buckley was the face of the Conservative Movement, founder of National Review and host of the TV Show Firing Line, where his witty repartee with fellow conservatives and the occasional liberal offered the image of genteel conservatism. Buckley also dismissed the John Birch Society, the Anti-communist organization fueled by conspiracy theories, from the Conservative Movement. But the ground underneath conservatism was shifting by the early 1990s, traditionalists, libertarians, defense hawks, and supply side economics were somewhat adrift in the post-Cold War world. Buchannan proudly called himself a paleoconservative, a radical rightist modeled on Franco and Mussolini.

Intellectual paleoconservatives loom large in the book. Samuel T. Francis and Murray Rothbard, one a white nationalist and the other an anarcho-capitalist, gave voice to the new currents. They despised the limited government mantra of the Reagan era. They hated democracy, Rothbard spoke of repealing the 20th Century and "breaking the clock" of democracy. Francis advocated for a strong state not unlike the Mafia, The Godfather was his ideal "right wing utopia." For Conservatives to win, they must champion culture above all else, a strange blend of confederacy worship and Anglo-Saxon fetishization. Francis identified the growth of militias and militancy in 1980s America as the first stirrings of a new culture war, a sign of people starting to wake up in the heartland.

Ganz explains how the farming crisis of the 1980s radicalized many whites in the Great Plains. A chapter on Ruby Ridge, the botched Federal raid on armed militants in Idaho that led to the loss of innocent life, becoming a cause celebre for antigovernmental forces spreading like wildfire. Economic displacement fueled the new militancy, often fueled by crackpot theories, xenophobia, and antisemitism. The 1992 candidacy of Texas mogul Ross Perot (another major character in the book), which captured the imagination of many by promising he could fix everything with smarts and hard work was a foreshadowing of Trump.

The central question of the book, in the words of Ganz:

We are still working to answer why the loss of faith in the old order has registered an intensified anti-egalitarianism rather than a renewed egalitarianism, why perceptions of public corruption and criminality have led to the open embrace of corruption and criminality rather than its rejection, and why discontent with the distribution of wealth and power has fostered closer popular identification with certain types of capitalism and capitalists (22).

Part of the answer lies in the lack of imagination of liberal politicians. Ganz never quite argues the notion but suggests it. It's in his critique of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Governor of Arkansas, Clinton hammered Bush's economic policies while his folksy persona exuded charm and intelligence. But he was also temperamental and sensitive to criticism from the left of his own party, especially from the more progressive Jesse Jackson wing. Clinton liked the perks of being a statesman, he enjoyed rubbing shoulders with power brokers and celebrities a bit too much. His two terms as President saw him make many compromises with the Right on economic policy.

Ganz points out how the populists' movements on the Left such as Jesse Jackson's attempt to build a multi-racial working-class movement and Bernie Sanders championing social democracy never got their proper chance. The malaise of the Democratic Party, Robert Altman's TV series Tanner '88 is an excellent example, is another part of this story.

In a way, Trump is the main character in the book even though he only makes a few appearances in the chapter on 1990s New York City politics and the popularity of the gangster John Gotti. Trump's psychic connection with middle America did not happen overnight, he's like a Frankenstein the radical right envisioned promising to fix everything, stopping illegal immigration, casually endorsing conspiracy theories, talking like a mobster, famous for being famous, and promising retribution to all internal enemies. 

With the 2024 Presidential election looming, the Right has their radical plans in place for Day 1. The world of a year from now would look ominously different. When the Clock Broke illustrates how the fringe becomes the norm due to economic and cultural forces. But even if the immediate existential crisis of democracy is averted this time around, the problem of wealth distribution will remain, and it will rest on the shoulders of those who believe in democracy to prove they are up to the challenge.