
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 16, 1995                   TAG: 9504180043
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

EXTRA READING

If you want to know more about emerging diseases and how they are acting, here's a booklist, which ranges from the easy-to-read drama of "The Hot Zone" to the heavier, "The Coming Plagues."

"The Hot Zone," by Richard Preston, (Random House, 1994, 300 pages) is based on a true story of the disaster that could have happened when the highly contagious ebola virus was found among monkeys housed in a building in Reston, Va. The book is written from the viewpoint of the military personnel who worked on the outbreak, but the Virginia Health Department was also there, including Dr. Suzanne Jenkins, assistant state epidemologist. Jenkins was the health department's spokeswoman during this year's outbreak of invasive strep A cases in Virginia. This book begs to be read without stopping; set aside two long nights.

"The Coming Plague," by Laurie Garrett, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994, 750 pages), details the world conditions in which viruses mutate and spread, such as inadequate air circulation on airplanes and massive refugee migrations. It also discusses solutions. It's broken into chapters and will take a while to digest, but the reading is easy.

"A Dancing Matrix," by Robin Marantz Henig, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, 269 pages), looks at viral research and the scientists on the cutting edge of it.

by CNB