I've known John and Janice Baldwin for about 2 years now and have always admired their devout interest in 'practical applications' of sociological science to the real world -- and, most importantly, real people. This is the raison d'etre of their well-attended and well-received Human Sexuality courses at UCSB, as well as John's courses on pragmatism and *ethical* captalism. The Baldwins genuinely care about people-- this book helps bring sociology 'to the people' in their excellent tradition. Enjoy!

I've read this book twice now and keep thinking, "what a great idea, too bad the med guy didn't farm the idea out to someone who could write!" But he thought he did; wish he'd sent it to me. Ignoring all the trivial errors (misspellings of diseases, "North Ridge earthquake," calling the valley fever org. "cocci" when that term refers to all cocci forms of bacteria, "congenital arthritic hip" of Drew (think they meant congenital dysplasia causing the arthritis, not too many babies born with arthritis!), the faults in writing are amazing: rotten character development (for ex. Byrne is described in such detail at first encounter w/his pony tail, and when he has to cut it off, but do we ever hear about his pony tail again? So much for his Samson anguish), bringing up interesting points only to drop them (Kameron's taping of Byrne's comments at Mia's lecture, mention about doctoring them -- never shows up again), and leaden writing style.

Guess there's going to be another book soon, maybe the Fifth Horseman? Hope these two get a better editor.

Interesting subject matter but the many editorial/writing flaws in the book kept detracting from the story. I got worried when there was a date/time error in the first few pages of the book and the problem continued throughout. I don't mind flashbacks to earlier dates if the characters don't know on that earlier date what they had found out 2 weeks later according to the book's timeline.

There was other incorrect information in there such as the young Jewish boy saying he got hooked up to the Library of Congess to search Grateful Med. Grateful Med is provided by the National Library of Medicine. It made me wonder what other errors I wasn't aware of in some of the scientific/technical aspects of the plagues.

Despite my frustration with the authors/editors not catching some of the inconsistencies, I managed to finish the book because the subject matter interested me. However if you want to read books along this subject line, I'd have to recommend "The Hot Zone" or "The Cobra Event", "And the Band Played On" or several other books (some fiction & nonfiction like those mentioned above)before recommending this one. It was a struggle to stick with it even though the characters were fairly well developed and the concept was intriguing.

If you can avoid all the techno-[material] and long histories of some of the characters, you're in for a frightening look at how easy bioterrorism is. THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE revolves around a madman's plot to mirror the ten plagues of Moses and kill off vast amounts of people all in the name of God. Character-wise, there's no one here we haven't met before, and even the villain is rehashed from Dr. Phibes through Hannibal Lechter. However, the book has some terrifying scenes and some surprises, too. It's a little long in the tooth and is nowhere as realistically frightening as THE HOT ZONE, but it's still a scary read.
RECOMMENDED.