Título: The Demon in the Freezer
Autor: Richard Preston
Sinopse: “The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.”—Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes us into the heart of Usamriid, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, once the headquarters of the U.S. biological weapons program and now the epicenter of national biodefense. Peter Jahrling, the top scientist at Usamriid, a wry virologist who cut his teeth on Ebola, one of the world’s most lethal emerging viruses, has ORCON security clearance that gives him access to top secret information on bioweapons. His most urgent priority is to develop a drug that will take on smallpox-and win. Eradicated from the planet in 1979 in one of the great triumphs of modern science, the smallpox virus now resides, officially, in only two high-security freezers-at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and in Siberia, at a Russian virology institute called Vector. But the demon in the freezer has been set loose. It is almost certain that illegal stocks are in the possession of hostile states, including Iraq and North Korea. Jahrling is haunted by the thought that biologists in secret labs are using genetic engineering to create a new superpox virus, a smallpox resistant to all vaccines. Usamriid went into a state of Delta Alert on September 11 and activated its emergency response teams when the first anthrax letters were opened in New York and Washington, D.C. Preston reports, in unprecedented detail, on the government’ s response to the attacks and takes us into the ongoing FBI investigation. His story is based on interviews with top-level FBI agents and with Dr. Steven Hatfill. Jahrling is leading a team of scientists doing controversial experiments with live smallpox virus at CDC. Preston takes us into the lab where Jahrling is reawakening smallpox and explains, with cool and devastating precision, what may be at stake if his last bold experiment fails.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “The Demon in the Freezer”, de Richard Preston, publicado pela editora Random House, em 2002 e com 256 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: Random House
Páginas: 256
Ano: 2002
Edição: 1
Linguagem: pt_BR
ISBN: 9781588362452
ISBN13: 9781588362452
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Random House apresentam uma variedade de narrativas que transitam entre o realismo histórico, o suspense contemporâneo e a ficção especulativa. A experiência de leitura costuma envolver personagens complexos em ambientes que vão desde pequenas vilas inglesas até cidades modernas e mundos imaginários, com conflitos que exploram tanto dramas pessoais quanto questões sociais amplas. O catálogo sugere obras que equilibram enredos mais narrativos e envolventes com textos que dialogam com temas atuais, como justiça social e memórias históricas, sempre com um ritmo que pode variar do introspectivo ao tenso. A linguagem, em geral, é acessível, mas não simplificada, convidando leitores que apreciam tanto o desenvolvimento psicológico quanto a construção cuidadosa do cenário.
