At Fort Detrick's USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation's capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic "hot" virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.

The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race. From a remote African cave hot with Ebola virus, to an airplane over Africa that is carrying a sick passenger who dissolves into a human virus bomb, to the confines of a Biosafety Level 4 military lab where scientists risk their lives studying lethal substances that could kill them quickly and horribly, The Hot Zone describes situations that a few years ago would have been taken for science fiction. As the tropical wildernesses of the world are destroyed, previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are entering human populations. The appearance of AIDS is part of a larger pattern, and the implications for the future of the human species are terrifying.

The Hot Zone, a New York Times #1 nonfiction bestseller, has been published in more than 30 languages and has sold more then 2.5 million copies.

"The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life--and then it gets worse. That's what I keep marveling over: it keeps getting worse. What a remarkable piece of work."
--Stephen King

"A tour de force ... Preston uses the power of simple narrative to drive deep his story's urgent truths."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Riveting. . . . Swashbuckling reading."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Popular science writing at its best and the year's most infectious page-turner."
--People