Books like Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC

So my criticisms for this book remain. It seems to be a direct response to "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston by continually saying things like "despite what popular fiction and non-fiction novels say Ebola does not 'melt the organs' they stay intact" which is fine. Maybe Preston exaggerated a bit, but the truth is that his writing is both compelling, exciting, and informative. This book suffers from too many narrative voices, as well as trying to be both clinical and compelling. It made me pretty confused. On the good side they were exceptionally compassionate towards the victims of the disease and the issue of poorly run third world governments. They also made another good point in that these diseases have probably always been around in rural and farming communities but have come to light due to overpopulation in cities and the subsequent outbreaks in urban hospitals due to the overpopulation and decrease in hygiene. My main disappointment with this book is although I find the lab techniques interesting, the thing I want to know is exactly how the diseases work. Why I liked "The Hot Zone" and "Yellow Fever, Black Goddess" so much is that they talked about how the diseases worked on a cellular level, not just the symptoms and treatment. So they somehow managed to be extremely clinical while not giving me the details I find the most interesting. Writing-wise, Susan is far more interesting of a writer than Joe, but near the end of the book they start combining paragraphs so you don't know who's writing what till they refer to each other. That makes it very confusing. There are also several blatant grammatical mistakes which considering that I was reading an "updated" copy really should have no excuse being there, this wasn't the first print. But despite all my problems with the book, they still told a really solid story about finding and fighting disease in hellaciously poor and war-torn parts of the world.