Virus Hunter: Thirty Years of Battling Hot Viruses Around the World

The commander of the Army virology unit that battled Ebola in The Hot Zone--and current director of Special Pathogens at the CDC--teams up with the bestselling co-author of Mind Hunter to chronicle his extraordinary thirty-year career fighting deadly viruses.

Currently the head of Special Pathogens at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, C. J. Peters has been on the front lines of our biological war against hot viruses for three decades in South America, the U.S., and Africa. In Virus Hunter, he recounts his lifelong battle against these deadly and invisible agents--and the all-too-often equally dangerous bureaucratic turf wars that have at times escalated the conflict and exacerbated epidemics. From investigating Venezuelan equine encephalitis and Bolivian hemorrhagic fever to containing Ebola in Reston, Virginia, and the deadly hantavirus in the Southwestern U.S., Peters offers a fascinating array of stories about the clash between biology and bureaucracy--and the threat emerging viruses pose to our species.

Written with bestselling co-author Mark Olshaker (Mind Hunter), Virus Hunter is a first person memoir by one of the leading virologists in the Ebola outbreak and a dramatic complement to the mega-bestseller The Hot Zone.

Books such as Richard Preston's The Hot Zone thrust the deadly Ebola virus into the spotlight, but they can't match the first-person perspective of Virus Hunter. Author C. J. Peters is an ex-army colonel who has spent his professional life studying deadly pathogens in the lab and in the wild. He spins a drama- and adrenaline-filled true tale of virus hunters, which is gripping despite its occasional tendency to grow verbose and detour into personal history. Peters offers a look at crippling diseases not only through the eyes of a scientist, but also with the perspective of an insider in the defense establishment, painting a chilling picture of the potential of biological terrorism or outright warfare.