Richard Preston traces the known paths of Ebola and Marburg in The Hot Zone. He tells of their discovery, effects, and the outbreaks. Level 4 scientists for the Army, the CDC, and several civilian scientists track down the viruses in order to conduct tests and find the secret hiding place of the viruses. The height of the story occurs when Ebola Zaire is discovered in a monkey house near Washington, D.C. and the Army has to decontaminate the entire facility. Luckily, the airborne strain only affected monkeys and didn't infect humans. Preston concludes with his own trip to Africa to look at a possible reservoir of the viruses.

Preston's style is sensational journalism. He uses graphic detail when describing the effects of the viruses to make it sensational. Doctors would be brief and scientific in their reports on the sympto

ms. Preston description's are not brief and are graphic. " His face lost all appearance of life and set itself into and expressionless make...the eyeballs themselves seemed almost frozen in their sockets, and they turned bright red. He began to look like a zombie...and then you see that his lips are smeared with something slippery and red, mixed with black specks, as if he has been chewing coffee grounds. .... He is going into shock. He leans over, head on his knees, and brings up an incredible quantity of blood from his stomach and spills it onto the floor with a gasping groan. The only sound is a choking in his throat as he continues to vomit while unconscious. Then comes a sound like a bedsheet being torn in half, which is the sound of his bowels opening and venting blood. The blood is mixed with intestinal lining." No doctor would ever describe the effects like Preston did. He is graphic to make it more interesting and exciting. He "spices" it up to attract and draw the attention of the reader, to get his point across.

Preston tries to develop the characters, make them more reals. He gives background information, physical description, and occasionally talks about some personal habits or what others thought of them. "Some of the officers at Fort Detrick had noticed a certain abrupt quality in her hand motions and had accused her of having

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 922
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)