Chemical-Weapons Books

Chemical Soldiers is an excellent resource for information concerning the chemical warfare used in WWI. It was an easy read and very informative.

Donald Richter made an exhaustive and brilliant account of these difficult years when the chemical war was a crude and even effective solution .
Watch the details about this unknown aspect of this awful fact meant in the curse of the war .
Interesting and extraordinary document .
Don't miss it .

Richard Price writes a professional treatise on the perception of Chemical Weapons from WWI to current day. It is a profound work, and goes into refreshing details without the slightest redundancy with other works. The Chemical Weapons Taboo can be thought of as an original scholarly work.

He clarifies many current day perceptions on Chemical Weapons by analyzing treaties and political decisions. Rather than rely on perfunctory assumptions of those treaties, he analyzes the committee notes and conduct of those treaties to show the conflict of ideas within their own context. Classically he addresses the taboo's of poisons, weapons of the weak, and other themes, showing the inconsistencies in a norm, and how they faulter in expalining the Chemical Weapons Taboo.

Readers not familiar with the scholarly styles of contemporary writings in philosophy will find this a difficult book to digest. The vocabulary is not scientific/technical, but percise and demanding. Nonetheless, it is insightful on the processes of international law, conduct of states, and the historical era's that have influenced the current day "taboo."

An intensely rewarding study (i.e., six-stars). By showing how the "taboo" was arrived at in Western societies, it is apparent that it is not a universally held notion.

The author concludes that weapons are "political artifacts," not merely the inevitable consiquence of technology. A notion that many in the military-industial complex can concur with.

This book offers the reader a wide perspective about chemical weapons and how they have been used in the past. As a historic reference, it is invaluable, and as a work that helps the reader imagine what could happen in the future, this is a must. Every person involved or worried about mass destructions weapons, must read and treasure this book.

The improbable story of a weapon of mass destruction discovered by a student, who was also a priest, at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC. It was later tested and mass produced by the military in World War I, too late for service in that war, but used by the Japanese in the 1930s and Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. This topic continues to create queries for the staff of the university archives of The Catholic University and is a never ending point of irony in CUA's institutional memory.

I found this an interesting book. I felt that the author could have held back some of his personal opinions on the more recent issues at American University but they did not significantly detract from his presentation of a significant research effort.

Joel Vilensky has written an extremely well researched book on the frantic development of Lewisite during the waning days of World War I. Although Lewisite was never used by the United States in any armed conflict including and after WW I, its legacy as a weapon of mass distruction continues to the present. At the conclusion of WW I, Lewisite was touted by the United States as the most significant weapon of the era. In this respect it is analogous to the Atomic Bomb of WW II. War history buffs, and the general reader, will be intrigued with this fascinating story.

Phil Reiss

"Germs: Biological Weapons & America's Secret War," J. Miller, Engelberg & Broad. Simon & Schuster 2001, NY. ISBN: 0-684-87158-0, HC 382 pgs., which includes Index 12 pgs., Notes 44 pgs., Biblio. 4 pgs., 6.5" x 9.5"

All three authors are accomplished, active journalist correspondents (NY Times & Times) who write using well-researched data of the scope & depth of biological research warfare carried out, mostly secretively, by world powers including the Soviets, USA, Iran and Iraq.

"Germs" opens with a desription of how an Oregon cult of Rajneeshees in 1984 deliberately placed cultured Salmonella bacteria in food to poison hundreds (751) of people in an Oregon power grab to take over a county government. They were caught & convicted.

Subsequent chapters are fairly technical, but compelling, on the details of the R & D by the US & its CIA of chemical & biological germ warfare efforts on colossal scales including methods for delivery, dispersal & protection of military using (both cultured normal and genetically altered) bacteria, viruses, & rickettsia: this included tularemia (plague), TB, smallpox, botulism, Valley fever, encephalitis (VEE) organisms and food-poisonings, snake venoms, ricin, etc. The contributing expertise of genetist Joshua Lederberg and the dismal role played by President William Jefferson Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair is discussed in detail. All in all, "Germs" is an unsettling read, and the book ends just prior to the 2nd. attack on the Twin-Towers.

"Germs" highlights the unpreparedness of the United States to deal adequately with any major catastrophe, documented by failures in several mock disasters including the May 17, 2000 Denver, "Operation TopOff." The book also details the 1999 misdiagnosis and ineptness of the CDC in finding the cause of the mysterious human and bird cases of encephalitis in Queens, NY - first citing St. Louis Encephalitis (SLE) - but later discovering it to be a West Nile virus and learning it could be spread sans mosquito vector. If you must know where millions, nay billions, of US tax dollars are spent, read "Germs". This is non-fiction at its finest and at its scariest.

My conclusion after reading this book: How evil man is! It seems that all what mankind is really concerned about is how to destroy itself by the cruelest, most wicked and gruesome ways possible. The atomic bomb was not enough to satisfy man's craving for destruction. Newer means of killing one's adversaries had to be created. Germs, bacteria, and viruses could fulfill man's desire for gruesome killings - for now!

The book starts in 1984 Dalles, Oregon, when an Indian sect, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, poisons the residents with salmonella. No one died, but nearly 1,000 were infected with a strain of salmonella that the sect had legally obtained, then cultured and distributed by spraying it on the food of the unsuspecting residents. The goal of the sect was to incapacitate the residents in order to keep them home and unable to vote in the coming elections! The authors show how easy it is for anyone to acquire and then scatter biological agents.

The authors then describe other instances when biological agents were used, such as the Aum Shinrikyo sarin attacks on a Tokyo subway. They also trace the history of biological warfare, starting from World War II to the present.

The authors also show how politics play a role in this biological warfare. Governments trick each other, making the other believe they have no biological weapons when in fact they do! They sign treaties between each other banning the culture of biological agents, but secretly break those treaties. The authors explain the biological agents that governments have cultured for warfare (such as Anthrax, and Ebola). They also make us aware that many scientists around the globe (especially in the former Soviet Union) who worked on biological warfare can now be easily recruited by other countries such as Iran and North Korea. The threat of biological warfare is still rising, according to the authors.

Furthermore, they argue, germ warfare is suited to unconventional attacks by terrorists. Germs can kill as many people as atomic bombs, are more discreet to manufacture, transport, and use on targets. They also give time for the terrorist to escape (i.e. leave the country).

The question that will linger on your mind at the completion of the book is whether doomsday will be a result of a massive nuclear war, of microscopic biological agents, or of as now an undiscovered and more horrific weapon!

"While the U.S. maintained an active "bugs and gas" program in the '50s and early '60s, bio-weapons were effectively pulled off this country's agenda in 1972 when countries around the world, led by the United States, forswore development of such weapons at the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The issue reemerged in the early '90s thanks to Saddam Hussein and revelations of the clandestine and massive buildup of bio-weapons in remote corners of the Soviet Union." - Harry Edwards

When Bush 2.0 resisted renewal of a defunct ABM treaty with the USSR, a defunct country, liberal complainers slammed his disrespect for the sacredness of words on paper. Germs, the good book by Times guys & Judith Miller, discloses the aftermath of another sadred treaty with the USSR, the one signed by Nixon & Brezhnev that outlawed development of WBD, weapons of biological destruction.

Nixon and the United States honored that treaty. Brezhnev and the USSR broke it, even after the USSR broke up. Ken Alibek, recent defector from Russia's recent Biopreparat bio-terror program, demonstrated that bad stuff happened back in the USSR and the ex-USSR for at least twenty years after the Reds promised to play well with others & to be nice. Judith Miller, recent star of the Plame Name Blame Game, was certain that residual bugs from Russian germ factories were being stored by Saddam Hussein. Maybe. Maybe it's now in Syria, or maybe Miller got bad intel, Chalabi's revenge.

The good news is that the bio-weapons and poison gas that Saddam apparently didn't have in 2003 were weapons that weren't available for use against liberating and/or invading Americans. The bad news is that, when Americans could not find the weapons that were not used against them, the liberation of Iraq looked to the world like unprovoked aggression and invasion. C'est le guerre.

Ms. Miller and I go way back, back before Iraq. I read this book during our interminable rush to war; then I read Miller's front-page refutations of the anti-war posture of the anti-war Jayson-Blair Times. The Times prominently printed Miller's refutations of its own bias, a bias that now looks prescient while Miller, Bush, Chalabi, and Chalabi's war look bad. C'est le vie.

Still, because germs are with us always, Germs is worth your money and time. Miller's story about the Bhagwan's bio-terror attack on Oregon -- probably the first bio attack on America; forget about bogus apocryphal reports of smallpox-infested blankets delivered to Indians -- is necessary & sufficient reason for reading this book.

There are a lot of people who want to discredit the entire book for one reason or another, and they're just plain wrong. In the early 90's, I was an Army infantry officer; I had gone through the army's NBC school (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical), served as my unit's NBC officer, and did a lot of additional reading on these topics, including reading this book. Almost everything I read in this book rings true. The average American would be smart to read this book (although most Americans are too lazy, too self-absorbed in Reality TV, and too stupid to be able to comprehend the highly-technical information in the book) and to be aware that biochemical weapons are very enticing to terrorists.

Judith Miller et al. have successfully illustrated that the fear of nuclear weapons or terrorist-planned "dirty bomb" attacks are the least of our worries. Rather, the danger lies in microbes and human biology.

At the height of the Cold War, Soviet and American scientists generated enough biological and viral agents to kill the inhabitants of the Earth many times over. The problem emerging now is where have all these bio and viral weapons gone, and perhaps more important, where have the scientists gone?

Miller et al. argue the simplicity of scientific techniques necessary for creating bio and viral weapons makes them a prime device for terror. Miller and others site a number of examples to illustrate the ease with which a bio attack is possible. For example, the Aum Shinrikyo sarin attacks on a Tokyo subway and a domestic attack of salmonella poisoning in Oregon were both committed with homemade agents. However, these attacks pale in comparison to what could happen. With the virulence of agents magnified to a nearly unfathomable level, if even a small amount of toxins escaped from their "safe" containers stored around the world, the death toll would be horrendous. Miller et al. have brought to light the horrible possibilities of bio or chemical weapons proliferation, and I, for one, am in agreement.

Since the terror attacks of 9-11, a lot of attention has gone into the science and threat of weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, there has been little history to accompany it, especially within the American popular press. This is unfortunate, as both biological and chemical weapons have been used extensively throughout human history by many nations and armies against other nations and armies. In this context, this is a good book to read to gain historical and moral perspective on the use of such weapons.

This book provides a history of the science and use of both chemical and biological weapons within the context of Western recorded history. The book begins with references of these types of weapons in ancient Greek, such as in the tasks of Hercules. The use of these weapons in warfare is then covered, such as how Roman armies would poison the water supplies of their enemies, or how white settlers purposely infected Native Americans with diseases like smallpox during the colonial era.

The book does a good job of covering the science and technology of these weapons, their efficacy and reliability in use, the decision-making and moral balancing that decided their employment, and their relative importance on and off the battlefield compared with other weapons and military tactics.

The book is lacking on one front; it completely leaves out the use of addictive drugs in war. Whether it was opium in China, alcohol in North America or cocaine in South America, the use of addictive drugs by one group of people to weaken, enslave and even destroy another group of people is common practice in the history of man. Granted there might not be enough historical evidence to document such behavior. But overall, it is a good book to read and worthy of any bookshelf.

Mayor's "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs" purports to be an historical survey of biological and chemical warfare in ancient times. Certainly we knew a lot about naptha (Greek Fire), a much-feared incendiary weapon, and I think poison arrows were fairly well known too, but her research has uncovered several other strange and disgusting ways of killing people, such as pouring molten pitch, distilling snake venom, cultivating diseases and, yes, bundling venomous snakes or scorpions up and lobbing the resultant "bomb" in the enemy's direction. The book is a pretty good compilation of these various methods. Nevertheless it is a very, very dry compendium; it also gets ahead of itself. Is it really fair to say that elephants, as used by Hannibal, were a "biological" weapon - if so, then every cavalry battalion has been a weapon of mass destruction. Nonetheless a very interesting work, if somewhat disappointing in presentation.

You will enjoy this book even if you don't care for military history. I recommend this for anyone interested in ancient Greece and parallels to modern reality. This was well-written, entertaining and not too academic. I liked the weaving in of myth, the practical truth behind it. You won't be disappointed.

Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, by Adrienne Mayor, has a promising title. It claims to be about biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world, but this book comes far short of its claims. Although the book is divided into chapters, it jumps around chaotically, there seems to be no order to the presentation as Mayor's jumps topics, chronology and geographics. There is almost an implication that China, India, Rome, Persia, Greece and others elsewhere were developing similar weapons simultaneously, despite the years and miles that separated them. This book is so repetitious; the same stories are retold, some even within the same chapter. It is not clear what is chemical, biological, myth or history. Are elephants, camels, bears and dogs biological weapons in the normal sense of the term? There is very little presented in terms of science and technology, and this topic demands it. Worse are the ridiculous conclusions that fall from the scant evidence in the ancient literature, particularly the myths, where she does not hypothesize, but makes unconditional claims that the evidence clearly shows the use of these weapons. Throughout the book she throws in her self-righteous moralizing, with an underlying anti-west, anti-religious bias, reaching her peak with the ridiculous rant in the last chapter about modern weapons and their dismantling (the US government can't win, even in trying to rid of the weapons). Does she really believe that burying nuclear waste (only a fraction from weapons) underground will cause earthquakes (page 255)? The endnotes (there are no linked footnotes) offer little about where to find more information. I wanted this book to be better; it is an interesting topic, but it is a poorly written and edited disappointment.

Greek Fire is an extraordinary book. To put the subject of the book plainly, it deals with biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world from myth to history. I had not given much thought to the use of chemical and biological agents in the ancient world, focussing instead on the more familiar weaponry and tactics. The majority of historians and certainly the people we know probably believe that chemical weapons were created in World War I, with the advent of mustard and other gasses. This is very far from the truth and Adrienne Mayor provides us with the missing link in the ancient world: the use of dangerous agents to cause mass destruction.

The book is well organized into subjects dealing first with the mythic origin of chemical weapons: Hercules and the Hydra. Ms. Mayor proceeds to discuss poisoned arrows, defeating enemies by poisoning water and diverting streams, winning a victory by poisoning the food your enemies will eat, the use of insects and animals against enemies and creating chemical weapons, such as flame throwers. We learn that the ancients understood that animals such as rats and mice were the cause of plagues, how shamans went out to gather dangerous plants and how they were handled in the preparation of weapons and how real Pandora's boxes existed filled with plague-generating material.

Ms. Mayor often includes modern parallels to the ancient stories, including recent events, to show that the use of chemical and biological weapons were (and still are) used to create fear of the weapon. I found it surprising to learn that Winston Churchill ordered poison gas used against the Kurds in the 1920s. This book is a wealth of information about the development and use of chemical and biological weapons in the ancient world, the feeling engendered about the weapons and the clever stratagems employed many times in the use of these weapons. As one reads this book, its importance becomes more evident with each chapter and you wonder why no one has come to realize the long history of terror weapons and how people felt centuries ago is still relevant to our time. Greek Fire is a well-written and its subjects are thoroughly discussed. It is a hard book to put down and will not disappoint.

This is "the other" good book on Unit 731 and the bacteriological warfare research and development secret Japanese program (focused mainly in occupied Manchuria and Northern China, mainly in the 30's) that included (or rather consisted of) large-scale laboratory experimentation on humans doomed to die (sometimes after being vivisected, with a little anesthesia as an option that could be easily dispensed with).

How many men, women and children died directly in lab experimentation? Difficult to answer: probably between five and fifteen thousand. How many during field testing on unaware civilian communities? The best guess is to double the previous range. How many died in real combat? We can safely double once more the range, noting by the way that some hundreds if not thousands of them were Japanese soldiers.

Who ordered and lavishly funded this program? The highest military brass, militarist extreme right-wing Japanese politicians and bureaucrats, perhaps the Imperial House, even the Showa Emperor Hirohito himself.
Who did the dirty job? The almost totality of the brightest physicians and biological experts of the country's elite Universities (but they didn't think that the job was dirty at all, just a very well-paid one).
Who was in command of the operation? A named Ishii, Shiro, a noted bacteriologist and a junior Lt. Col. when it all began, who ended his military career (but not his extravagant way of life) with militaty distinctions awarded by the Emperor himself, as the only Lt. General ever to come out from the Medical Corps.

How many of these men were brought on trial on war-crime charges? NIL, zero. Why? It's one of the most interesting questions on this bloody, mind-boggling business, and the book answers it well and directly enough.
Has the Japanese Government acknowledged that these events ever took place? NIL, no. Why? They can't care less about some thousand "human beings" (so to speak: during the Manchurian and Chinese "incidents" they were routinely spoken of as "logs" or, in one of the facilities, "experimental material") of clearly inferior races.

Has any US government acknowledged that these events ever took place? NIL, no. Why? They had to protect at all costs (and there were high costs involved, indeed) all the "medical" data that the Japanese war criminals intelligently traded for immunity from prosecution and living well paid lives on Government and private funding (I recommend you to read my review on the competing book "Unit 731: Testimony" by Hal Gold, so I can dispense with some long explanations).

If you started reading this, it means that the above data were to some extent known to you, unlike many of your countrymen. Turning therefore to this particular book ("Factories of Death") it will remain, probably forever, the "definitive" historical reference on the whole subject. It's written by a qualified historian, and it's rather thicker than the competition (some 385 pages of a much larger format). The story is well told, even if sometimes it seems twice-told: there is some amount of repetition, not as a cut-and paste affair, but trying to keep the reader on track with repeated contextual information. Every possible detail has been meticulously researched as far as possible and then more. The writing is fluid, but it's not a page-turner either, partly by the monstrosities it implies, partly for all the painstaking historical detail (probably TOO MUCH detail for non professional readers). One gets accustomed to skipping the end-of-chapter notes, with let's say 84 of them in small type, that give the references to the most abstruse documents and sources, even for the seasoned historian. Yes, there are some more pictures than in Hal Gold shorter and simpler book, but this really doesn't count as an advantage.

A honest, serious, rather balanced book it is, the scholarly work of a dedicated professional historian. A book that almost commends itself. If you want all the damned available details about this history, please don't hesitate to buy this very good book (by the way, signature-sewn rather than mass-market paperback, and with a 250-year life acid-free paper). If you, on the other hand, aren't very fond of abstruse bibliographical notes, and want a straightforward summary account, then Hal Gold's is your book, easier on your pocket and on your brain, but surely not on your heart.

You may believe you know all there is to know about the Japanese biological warfare program in WWII, chances are you don't. Sheldon Harris' book lays out all the detail of a massive bio research and employment operation conducted by the Japanese in Manchuria, China during WWII. Good stimulus for thought, particularly about ethics in time of war. Following the war, the American Government, made the conscious decision not to pursue war crime charges against those most responsible for this program in favor of exploiting the intelligence potential of the Japanese research. At the time, tensions were very high with the Soviet Union. The Chemical Warfare Service leadership was directly involved in that decision; you can decide for yourself whether that was the right call. The book bogs down a bit at the end, delving deeply in the U.S. government's investigation of the Japanese efforts, some may find this interesting, others will want to skip lightly through these chapters.

Dr. Harris' monumental work raises so many questions! Who in KMT China and Yenan, US War Dept, Surgeon General's Office knew what and when? So many "spook" organizations active before, during, after the war in China, Asia, I wish some scholar(s) would complete the picture, especially re Nanking Unit, "field" use of BW, hard-drug industry interconnections, trade between "Free" and "Occupied" China, "Golden Lily". Cross-referencing between Dr. Harris' book, other serious books, certain names keep turning up!

I read this book because, frankly, my knowledge of this subject is weak. I know some about the Japanese Unit 731, but not much compared to the reading I have done on the Nazi's similar nefarious efforts.

The book does impart a good amount of information, but is not that well-written. If it were not for some references to 1990's events, I would swear this was a book out of the 1950's. Not that folks did not write great stuff in the 1950's, but the book's organization and style are, well, old-fashioned (??). Its not a good enough book to be 5 stars, and the writing quality takes it down to 3 stars. That said, I would suggest it to readers who have a definite interest in the Japanese BW efforts, and the U.S. giving them a Cold War "pass".

Harris' book is a necessary complement to the others which have been written over the years, i.e. it provides solid facts and data that were lacking in the other works. Although as a scientific piece of paper it is excellent, I have been disappointed in the treatment of such a horrible matter in such a scientifically detached way, much like the lukewarm attitude from journalists and reviewers when they talk about the deal made by the allied authorities with these criminals. In fact, they are worse than criminals since they treated their human victims much worse than people treat rats in their labs these days.
The pardon of these brutes and exchange for data on human experimentation was and is a dastardly act that should merit the strongest of condemnation. Saying it was a "Dark chapter in medical history.." simply does not cut it!! May the 10,000 victims of this horrible act eventually find the justice and peace they have waited so long for.

This book seems more like a review of records then adding anymore info.
I doubt if any more research has gone in to this book then average high school graduate goes through.
I felt it was a waste of time and money
Pankaj

I was fascinated from this book from the moment I picked it up: Ed Regis has the knack of being able to immerse his reader so deeply in the moment that it is a wrench to put it down. I am a practising microbiologist with a morbid fascination with biological weaponry and nasty zoonoses; this book certainly informed me perhaps better than I needed to be about things I had only previously read about at third- or fourth-hand, or heard as apocryphal anecdotes.

The only things I could fault in this book are that a) it is too short; b) it does not cover some of the more interesting recent biowar developments, such as Iraq's and South Africa's ventures into the field (but see a).

Apart from this, it is a fascinating, detailed and scholarly account of one of the darker areas of recent scientific history. It sits happily on my shelf next to his "Virus Ground Zero : Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control", which I consider a masterwork (but then, I love Ebola...).

The editorial review in the amazon.com entry for Ed Regis's "Biology of Doom" refers to a Herculean effort on the author's part to mine thousands of pages of previously-classified material on biological warfare research in Germany and Japan from the massive archives on the subject maintained in the United States and elsewhere as though merely the exertion were sure of yielding new insights on the subject... wish it were so, but it isn't.

"Biology of Doom" is another book on biological warfare, on a bookshelf already groaning with them. The "teaser" - the premise: that there is something especially sinister about the involvement of the governments of the world to develop diseases to be sued as weapons in order to accomplish national goals beyond the grasp of conventional armed force and threats-and-blandishments diplomacy, remains a true tease... because there still isn't anything worse about biological warfare than what we already know.

And what we already know, that Japan's infamous military germ warfare research Unit 731 and other Axis war criminal doctors were spared hanging for war crimes and murder by an American germ warfare agency greedy for the masses of data compiled by Japanese researchers, is undoubtedly terrible. It's also not news.

As far back as the early 1980s writers such as Sterling Seagrave ("Yellow Rain") have been alluding to this work, and for quite a long time since then an unsophisticated reader could have gotten the impression that the ONLY work done on biological and chemical warfare was being done at Fort Detrick, Porton Down and the Dugway Proving Ground - in other words, by America, Great Britain and their NATO allies - when the sorry fact was that the defensive work done at those installations was dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of the treaty-breaking biological warfare industry run by the Soviets while they slandered us lustily.

Regis does do respectable work in allowing us to visualize the monsters of Unit 731 coldly testing every killer germ and fungus imaginable to them on innocent men, women, and children... unfortunately, while Regis may have succeeded in drawing some previously undrawn dots in on the whole nasty chiaroscuro of military BW, he gives us no new or startling images that other writers had not already revealed to us.

In justice, Dr. Regis does draw more attention in his book to the Whitecoats, the brave conscientious objectors who during World War II volunteered to be exposed to biological warfare agents so that their effects might be closely monitored in the human model, and this is certainly a worthwhile addition to the popular literature on the history of biological warfare. Other parts of his book dealing with the history of Fort Detrick, such as the story of the "8-ball" enclosure, are fascinating but again have been covered by other writers in the popular literature (even in one or two popular-audience science-fiction novels written during the 1970s).

Certainly I share Regis' outrage about the callousness with which innocent blood was shed by the bioweaponeers of several countries, and at how so much indisputable evidence of so many murders comitted by the defeated countries of World War II in the name of better, deadlier weapons of war was kicked under the rug by the victors of that same war in their lust to learn all they could about that same obscene research... what Regis and too many of the other chroniclers of biological warfare research have failed to do is to capture the imagination of the world and vividly demonstrate the vast human tragedy of this research so that the public might be motivated to prevent the wrongs they describe from recurring.

And unfortunately, better research just doesn't make a better book, not by itself, without some effective means of making the reader care about what was uncovered. I wish I could reward all of Dr. Regis's hard work with better than an average rating, but he didn't give us better than an average book. The weakness of amazon.com's rating system is that I can't give half-points, because the book probably is above average, but I cannot honestly award a "4" to this book.

This is a good book for facts. Unfortunately, it is way out of date. Considering how fast technology is moving, what would lead someone to look back 20 years in the past and use that, as-is, for projecting forward?

Reality is going to bite us, hard.

The book was an awesome overview of the American, Russian and British programs of biological weapons. While the Americans and the British stuck to a treaty signed in the 1970's to stop the production of biological weapons, the Russian's only increased their production. And what a production they had! Almost unrealistic in its scope.

This book is important in its insight into the biological weapons programs of "the big three" and into the possible capabilities of what these programs could do. Information on the early projects at Ft. Dietrick, Maryland were very illuminating and lit a fire for me to read some more on this subject.

Overall, an exceptional book, important to read not only because of what was done, but what could be done with the remnants of what is left. Where did all the former Soviet scientists go? To the Middle East? Read this book - open your eyes!

Another hunky hero and feisty heroine page turner - it has it all: strong characters, complex plot and conspiracies galore. Don't pick this one up if you have plans for later...

In the book, she uses alot of incorrect references that even I as the layman would know, instead of referencing the CDC, or the center for disease control, she called in the CBC early on and then switchs to call it the CDC. I don;t know if that is picky but there are a lot of other inconsistencies in the book. Maybe she just needs a new editor or to actually do some research. In the beginning of the book, I did not like how she was rouchy at times and then all tender, how does the heroine go from telling the marine guard that he would like to get into her [...] to holding him in her arms while he died, kissing his lifeless forehead tenderly. I mean seriously that could have been cut because be was a minor character and the way the author described him he was a minor himself only about 20 years old. I just think it could have been handled a different way. Also the hero when he first encounters the heroine he thinks that she was responsible for the death of his friends even though he knows she did not kill them personally, his internal dialogue in the book calls her a "[...]" a couple times only to turn around and be all tender and falling in love. I didn't sell to me and was not well written.

Like one of the other reviewers, I had a lot of trouble getting past the lack of basic research done by the author. I realize that NSA (not "the NSA") is in the news these days, but couldn't she at least have read a book or done enough research to realize that it was the wrong government agency to use for this story line? It could have been a good book with just some minimal attention to detail.

The plot of this book was good and the pacing kept things interesting. Unfortunately, whoever edited it should be fired...immediately. There are basic grammatical mistakes (militaries vs military's, for example), research errors (it's CODIS, not CODUS), melodramatic and clichéd descriptions that should have been edited out, and dialogue that should have been made a bit more realistic.

If you can get beyond all that, however, Perfect Weapon is a fun read.

Brilliant Dr. Sydney Hale wants to find a cure for Alzheimer's. In order to get the funding, she has to take on a secret government project to find an antidote for Sarin gas poisoning. Deep under the caverns of the Shenandoah Valley, she and a team of chemists and doctors are working covertly when the unthinkable happens - a breach in protocol and the murder of most of her team while she is above taking a breather. With a team of assassins on her tail, she unknowingly involves Marine commander Jack Wilson, who is with some buddies thinning the deer herds when his highly decorated team is taken out without the opportunity to fight back. To the government investigators looking into the fiasco, Sydney might be involved, but Jack doesn't let them get close to her since he wants to find the culprits behinds the executions and smells a government cover up, taking Syd into protective custody. As the two go on the lam, their adrenalin turns to attraction and they can't get enough of each other. But danger and the threat to national security is around every corner.

After reading the wonderful "Naked Truth," I had to get Fetzer's entire library. But this novel was a huge disappointment for me. Bogged down with too much detail in some places, I just thought the detail was overkill, often inaccurate, and took away from the action. But Fetzer is great at writing sizzling love scenes, and these are definitely hot (and I liked when he referred to her as "Einstein"). I just wasn't too impressed with this novel overall and hope the rest are up to par with her "Naked." For me, this was just an okay read.

i read this and graysmith's book on the topic of the anthrax attacks. i found this book to be the better. reading it is like listening to someone describe a spider's web, with it's varying lines, thicknesses, angles, dimensions ... its not easy to fully explore a topic with different sites, characters, and the timelines. the author does more than an adequate job of accomplishing these tasks. with our finest investigative agencies never having publicly resolved this complex case, i felt disappointed when the end of the book came and we hadn't reached a conclusion, either... this is a quick read. given the difference between the current price new ($40.00) and used ($0.01), for the price - used - you can't go wrong.

Jeanne Guillemin attempts to unravel the complex mystery of the 1979 Siberian outbreak of anthrax. Was it really from tainted meat, as the Soviet officials would have the world believe? Was the cause due to burning of dead anthrax-infected animals or due an accidental or purposeful release of weaponized anthrax spores from the Soviet facility, Compound 19?

Guillemin approaches her study of the events and its root cause following all of the principles of sound science.

As a human being, however, her outrage over this incident continues to surface. As she recounts her investigation she interjects this outrage, often digressing from the story line to vent her indignation.

Unlike a possibly dry standard scientific thesis this story could have turned into, she includes many human elements in her writing. She describes the families of the victims, their losses, and sorrow. She also goes into great detail about what her team ate and drank, the meals they missed, and every possible incident interesting or otherwise about the trip to Siberia. She even includes a description of her inappropriate wearing of sandals for a Siberian spring. The author is writing for a general audience rather than for the scientific community and she or her publisher understands the need for the appealing human element. Sadly this takes the reader away from focusing on the many fascinating scientific and public health aspects of the study that almost become an aside to her story of the quest for information on the victims.

It is a worthwhile, though in parts wordy read. Read in conjunction with "Biohazard", the dark side of science is well represented.

Professor Guillemin's work on the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak in the former Soviet Union is written in a very conversational tone, which makes the book a quick read.

This conversational quality however quickly leads to off-topic meanderings; for example, parallels are drawn from classical Russian literature to situations she experiences (at least a fourth of her footnotes are to quoted Russian literature), and she often cannot resist waxing personal philosophic on the conditions of life in the world today (not necessarily in Russia). While she disowns the expected clinical descriptions and warns she chose a first-person, emotional narrative in the introduction, some (particularly specialists) might find this type of writing annoying.

This first-person approach has the deliberate quality of putting a human face on this situation of clinical interest -- and it is this attitude that dominates the work. She recounts the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak in terms of human loss and the suffering the families endured as a result. Her primary purpose is therefore to give the victims a voice. Not a bad thing, but not what I expected based on the title.

The down side to this emotional narrative is that the author often becomes whiny, even to the point of naivety (particularly about the realities of Cold War politics, the Biological Weapons Convention Treaty [which both the US and the USSR, not just the USSR, violated at will] and the extent and nature of the American bio-chemical weapons production programs. Unconscious assigning of white and black hats is an unfortunate bias to the work).

This work therefore should have been subtitled "A Sociological Exploration of the Aftermath of the Sverdlovsk Outbreak" or somesuch.

Methodologically, the approach is also problematic. While the testimony of the people of Sverdlovsk is vital, some of the critically important survivors could not be located, while others could not recall (or chose to forget) the details of the incident, which makes their accounts sometimes contradictory and the study itself largely incomplete. Moreover most of the citizen's testimony is hearsay, rumourmongering, or just plain speculation, usually governed by Soviet Cold War propaganda and disinformation. Many of the governmental officials simply refused to comment.

Professor Guillemin is a Sociologist and not a Bacteriologist/Epidemiologist, and this really affects the format of the work. She often quotes other Sociologists/Political Scientists on theoretics of social situations in transitional Russia (ostensibly as backgrounders), but these rarely have any relevance to the Sverdlovsk incident; often one is left with the impression she'd rather talk about the contemporary Russian people (or her husband!) and not the outbreak at all.

Of note is Professor Guillemin's aloofness to the 'scholarship' and eyewitnesses to Soviet bioweapons production during the Cold War. Although she names a few key individuals, she seems to give their first hand testimony almost no attention. I recommend Ken Alibek's _Biohazard_ (which includes a chapter on the Sverdlovsk incident), which Guillemin seems to have ignored. The reader is left wondering why Guillemin's many interviews didn't include Alibek/Alibekov or even Pasechnik (like Alibek, director of a biological weapons production facility in Russia before his defection), both of whom now reside in the US. Neither is any attention paid to the publications of KGB activities now emerging from the former Soviet Union. IOW, Guillemin doesn't seem to have done her homework.

Guillemin's work is however valuable, but ultimately for epidemiological reasons and for her reporting of the findings of the research team to which she was attached. The research team's conclusions are epidemiologically incomplete as well (the KGB seized all records and squelched the officials that could have assisted in an epizootic examination), but nonetheless the work advances the understanding of the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak.
As she was told by several Russians, this mystery will never be solved.

Avoid the book if you expect to find more than a paragraph of clinical detail or bacteriological discussion, to which Guillemin seems squeamish. She is however to be commended for presenting all her findings, incomplete or no. Such is good science.

I looked to this book for more details about the Sverdlovsk outbreak after reading "Biohazard," the excellent expose by Ken Alibek published a year after this book. Comparisons of the two books are inherently unfair and at the same time unavoidable because Alibek, who spent two decades directing major parts of the Soviet Union's covert biological warfare programs, knows so much more than everyone involved with this investigation could have ever hoped to uncover. Bottom line: I strongly recommend "Biohazard" over this book. Alibek's chapter on Sverdlovsk has riveting first-hand accounts of the accident at the anthrax production facility. And he names names!

This book presents circumstantial evidence from people who were outside the biological warfare program: attending doctors, victims' families, etc. Like "Biohazard," it also refutes the official "contaminated meat" story.

I did get a bit of the additional detail I was looking for, and for that I give it two stars, but it meanders quite a bit with childish, off-topic editorial musings that belong in a travelogue rather than in a presentation of findings, and I found it dull. I have more criticisms of this book but see no use in presenting them: there are nearly 400 used copies for sale here as I type this. It's dead.

Jeanne Guillemin's masterful account of the Sverdlovsk outbreak of anthrax in 1979 is a suspenseful medical mystery; a thoughtful analysis of the threats, real and imagined, of bioterrorism; and an intelligent tour of the sociological, political, and psychological ramifications of the event. A very appealing element of the book is the sheer power of the storytelling. We are drawn in by a personable, human, plucky narrator who, as a sociologist, a westerner, a woman, has to navigate the maze of Soviet bureaucracy to reach the human heart of the story. The portraits of those who died in the outbreak are highly detailed and poignant; the book is, in part, a testimony to the specific people who lost their lives as the result of a complex chain of events quite beyond them. I found the book compelling and moving -- a great read.

As other reviewers have said, Witcover picks up in 1976 where White left off in 1972. But Witcover's coverage is less grand than White's. Witcover deals with each primary candidate and the blow by blow of every twist and turn of the campaign. As White's "Making of" series went on he focused less and less on the little events and more and more on his own interviews with the candidates and grand thoughts. Witcover's story is far more focused. With so many primary candidates and such a close election, Witcover's close in coverage is a good fit.

Some of the highlights include:
1. Discussion of the four wild cards in the Democratic race: Humphrey, McGovern, McCarthy, and Muskie. Had any of these four run (as Democrats), the race would have been shaken up greatly.
2. The late entry of Frank Church and Jerry Brown. Given the requirements of a presidential campaign, this tactic would be almost unthinkable now. In 1976, in the case of Jerry Brown, it almost worked.
3. Hearing about the first presidential debates since 1960. These became a model for debates in every subsequent election.

If you have the time, consider giving this book a read for a blow by blow account of the '76 campaign.

What bothered me most about "Marathon" was that through 700 pages author Jules Witcover never gets underneath the major candidates' skin (Carter and Ford). This book is much more a long newspaper article than a biography of the powers of 1976. There is little depth, but it is heavy on names and numbers. Witcover seems happy to point out seeming inconsistencies in Jimmy Carter's public statements, but as a scholar he never gets to the nuance. I'm still not sure what Gerald Ford ran on in 1976, how could the author leave this out? As a review of 1976, Marathon is barely adequate--and it is a very far cry from quality leisure reading.

Journalist Jules Whitcover gives readers a comprehensive look at the 1976 Presidential campaign. Whitcover aptly describes the events, issues, candidates, and the state of the U.S.A. in 1976. President Gerald Ford was an unelected incumbent whose popularity dipped due to a sluggish economy and his pardon of Richard Nixon. Readers see how this made Ford ripe for a strong primary challenge by Ronald Reagan, and then the underdog in the fall campaign. The author shows how former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia swept to the nomination over several contenders via adroit primary strategy, luck, and a message of decency and trust. Then the author describes a fall campaign punctuated by mud-slinging, political manipulation, and quite a bit of foolishness. Finally, Carter won narrowly (after losing his big lead in the polls) due largely to his Southern roots and Ford's modest appeal. Readers get a strong feel for politics circa 1976, as well as a look at also-rans like Sargeant Shriver, Nelson Rockefeller, Birch Bayh, Frank Church, Jerry Brown, Henry Jackson, Morris Udall, etc.

Whitcover has written a thorough and very readable political narrative. He doesn't quite match the four MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT (1960-1972) editions by journalist Theodore H. White, but this is a vivid narrative.

For those who think Jimmy Carter was a pious Christian and never said a bad thing about anyone, read this book.

For those who think Gerald Ford was right - or wrong - in his pardon of Nixon, read this book.

For those who remember the far left policies of Muskie, McGovern, and Humphrey, read this book.

For those who barely remember Frank Church, Morris Udall, and Fred Harris, read this book.

For those who want to understand how Reagan learned from his 1976 mistakes - particularly in his selection of a running mate - and won four years later, read this book.

In short, if you like politics, read this book.

Though it is often overshadowed by the author's own later collaborations with Jack Germond (as well as the then-contemporary efforts of Hunter Thompson), Jules Witcover's Marathon is one of the unheralded classic works of the political nonfiction genre. Covering the twists and turns of the rather bizarre 1976 Presidential election, Witcover follows the campaign from the very first stirrings of Jimmy Carter's longshot candidacy at the '72 Democratic Convention all the way to the photo finish that finds the nation faced with a choice worthy of Samuel Beckett -- Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Lester Maddox, or Eugene McCarthy? In between, Witcover provides excellent, insightful coverage of the now-forgotten efforts of such diverse men as the tragically witty Mo Udall, the endearingly spacey Jerry Brown, the bizarrely sympathetic George Wallace, and the deliberately enigmatic Ronald Reagan to take their respective nominations away from these men and change the course of American history. If you ever wondered how America eventually produced a political system that could see everyone from Pennsylvania's hapless Gov. Milton Shapp to Oklahoma's radical former Sen. Fred Harris transformed, however briefly, into a legitimate presidential contender, this is the book for you. Years after it was written and, unfairly, neglected, Marathon stands as one of the best books ever written on the subject of how we occasionally stumble into selecting our nation's leader.