Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic

When avian flu began spreading across Asia in the early 2000s, it reawakened fears that had lain dormant for nearly a century. During the outbreak's deadliest years, Alan Sipress chased the virus as it infiltrated remote jungle villages and teeming cities and saw its mysteries elude the world's top scientists. In The Fatal Strain, Sipress details how socioeconomic and political realities in Asia make it the perfect petri dish in which the fast-mutating strain can become easily communicable among humans. Once it does, the ease and speed of international travel and worldwide economic interdependence could make it as destructive as the flu pandemic of 1918.In his vivid portrayal of the struggle between man and microbe, Sipress gives a front-line view of the accelerating number of near misses across Asia and the terrifying truth that the prospects for this impending health crisis may well be in the hands of cockfighters, live chicken merchants, and witch doctors rather than virologists or the World Health Organization.Like The Hot Zone and The Great Influenza, The Fatal Strain is a fast-moving account that brings the inevitability of an epidemic into a fascinating cultural, scientific, and political narrative.

Washington journalist Alan Sipress delivers a riveting account of why science alone can't stop the next pandemic.

Alan Sipress is a deputy business editor and former foreign correspondent at the Washington Post. In 2005, the Post team that he anchored was awarded the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing for coverage of the South Asian tsunami. He lives in Washington, D.C. George K. Wilson has narrated over one hundred fiction and nonfiction audiobook titles, from Thomas L. Friedman to Thomas Pynchon, and has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. He spent ten years in broadcast news, including for the American Forces Radio and Television Service and for rock radio in San Diego and Los Angeles. An American Academy of Dramatic Arts, West, graduate, his acting career includes stage, film, television, commercials, improvisational comedy, and stand-up. George has written and performed in over five hundred nationally syndicated short news satire features for public radio and NPR and has received a national Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Award for Best Public Service Program. He has also scripted and hosted corporate videos for Sony, Merck, IBM, and Price Waterhouse. He is currently working on a suspense short story collection and a thriller novel.