" The true stories themselves are fascinating, following people connected to the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an organization founded some sixty years ago to combat biological warfare and disease epidemics. That means that for decades they have been deployed to deal with small pox, SARS, and a mysterious immune disorder striking gay men that became the nightmare of HIV/AIDS. They were in charge during the post-9/11 anthrax scare, and were deployed on desperate missions to fight primitive diseases in third world countries. Every anecdote-driven chapter is worth reading for its information, though McKenna does the book few favors with a dry, highly procedural writing style that turns life-threatening situations dull. In particular her style of providing unhelpful miniature biographies of many people who rapidly become faceless casts in epidemics slows things down, and she has a habit of throwing a paragraph of false information at you only to dispel it in the next that seriously grates. The writing itself is well worth overcoming, though, to learn about an amazing service most readers will never have heard of before. "
— John, 1/13/2014