Deadly Feasts - by Richard Rhodes (Paperback)

About the Book

In a non-fiction narrative that reads like a medical thriller, Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France. Photos.

Book Synopsis

In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France--and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest US and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

Review Quotes

"Deadly Feasts is a book to be read and pondered carefully -- and perhaps acted on -- possibly before eating one's next hamburger."-Oliver Sacks, The New Yorker

"Deadly Feasts is a breezy, immensely readable account....It is a splendid description of the process by which scientific knowledge is advanced."-Claudia Winkler, The Weekly Standard

"[Rhodes] is a wonderful storyteller, Deadly Feasts is a great mystery story."-Nancy Schapiro, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A vivid and engrossing account of a scientific saga worthy of Paul de Kruff's Microbe-Hunters."-Beryl Lieff Benderly, San Jose Mercury News

"An Upton Sinclair-ish look inside the modern meat industry...Rhodes tells this medical detective story beautifully."-John Schwartz, The Washington Post

"Classic medical detective story."- George Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

"In the science literature of Armageddon, Deadly Feasts is in a class by itself....Rhodes is able to make hard science come alive."-Peter Collier, Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Richard Rhodes is the author of numerous books and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He graduated from Yale University and has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Appearing as host and correspondent for documentaries on public television's Frontline and American Experience series, he has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT and is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Visit his website RichardRhodes.com.