Reading Liberally Book Club

By Gregory Zuckerman

Genre: Non-Fiction

Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders, and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world’s biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn’t muster an effective response.
 
It was up to a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives to save civilization. A French businessman dismissed by many as a fabulist. A Turkish immigrant with little virus experience. A quirky Midwesterner obsessed with insect cells. A Boston scientist employing questionable techniques. A British scientist despised by his peers. Far from the limelight, each had spent years developing innovative vaccine approaches. Their work was met with skepticism and scorn. By 2020, these individuals had little proof of progress. Yet they and their colleagues wanted to be the ones to stop the virus holding the world hostage. They scrambled to turn their life’s work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months, each gunning to make the big breakthrough—and to beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed.

By Margaret Atwood

Genre: Sci-Fi/Dystopian

Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey—with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake—through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

This book is a chilling look at mankind’s faults, and resilience. Atwood has been a towering force in iiterature for decades now, and this is the first book in the Madaddam Trilogy and worth a read if you want to look into biopunk, pharmacuetical horror, and more.

By James V. Hart

Genre: Medical Drama

Season one of the National Geographic miniseries The Hot Zone follows Lt. Col. Nancy Jaax (Julianna Margulies), a U.S. Army scientist who races to contain the deadly Ebola virus after it unexpectedly appears in research monkeys just outside Washington, D.C., in 1989.

The series follows the outbreak, and flashbacks to Africa in 1970’s Zaire, where the mentor Wade Carter first studied the virus, as well as the bureaucratic struggle that the team faces while trying to tackle the Level 4 Biosafty lab to stop the spread of the deadly disease.