The novel explores the bigger picture as we go behind the scenes with the military, governments, service providers, hospitals and power stations facing their problems and trying to deal with the crisis. We all take electricity for granted until a power cut when we have experienced minor or major inconvenience. This doomsday scenario reads like a movie script in print with short scenes switching from country to country as the situation worsens. Step up Piero Manzano an Italian IT programmer who has a history of hacking and offers his expertise to the authorities. The story follows the impact of an international electricity blackout that threatens the world, caused by a hacker attack on the computer systems controlling power stations and the distribution grid. Blackout is the first thriller by Marc Elsberg, originally published in 2012 in Germany.
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(Shortform note: Since the book’s publication, three more filoviruses have been identified, all of which are strains of Ebola: Bundibugyo, Taï Forest, and Bombali.) Ebola Reston, the most recently discovered strain, which we’ll get to later.Ebola Zaire, the deadliest strain, with a kill rate of 9 in 10.Ebola Sudan, with a kill rate of about 1 in 2.Marburg, the mildest strain, with a kill rate of 1 in 4.There are four viruses in the filovirus family: The Filovirus FamilyĮbola belongs to a family of viruses named filoviruses, meaning “thread viruses,” because they look like threads or ropes under a microscope. But first, let’s talk about what the virus is and does. We’ll discuss the known outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg, as well as the potential for future outbreaks. Marburg and Ebola have only emerged a handful of times since, but most of the victims and communities hit with Marburg or Ebola have been devastated by the viruses’ brutal physical attacks, high infectiveness, and astronomical kill rates. The Ebola virus’s sister virus, Marburg, first appeared in the 1960s. Viruses hide among all living things-some are harmless, and some have the potential to wipe out huge swaths of people. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of The Hot Zone He is the original unlikely survivor, the man who always struggles free of the car crash and walks clear of the wreckage as the flames curl out: the latest iteration of the type, which runs through storytelling from archaic Greece to Hollywood, is Sandra Bullock's character in Alfonso Cuarón's blockbuster, Gravity.īut, as Aristotle put it in the Poetics, these are "episodes". He drags his crew bodily away from the island where the inhabitants gorge themselves on the memory-wiping, pleasure-giving lotus he withstands the ruinous song of the Sirens, who long to lure him to his death, by having himself lashed to the mast by his crew, whose ears he has stopped with wax he outwits the glamorous enchantress Circe, who turns his men into pigs he steers his ship between the maneating, many–headed Scylla and the deadly whirlpool Charybdis. The Odyssey is a poem that we tend to remember as the hero's colourful, salt-caked adventures on the high seas: his encounters with witches, nymphs and cyclopes, his journey to the land of the dead, his shrewd and quick-tongued and fast-witted outsmarting of the terrors in his path as he strives for a decade to reach his home after the sack of Troy. Izzy walks an indistinguishable line between Spellman family member and Spellman employee. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman tail a Spellman dig up dirt on, blackmail, and wiretap a Spellman. If only they could leave their work at the office. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. Invading people’s privacy comes naturally to Izzy. This twenty-eight-year-old may have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors-but the upshot is she’s good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family’s firm, Spellman Investigations. Meet Isabel “Izzy” Spellman, private investigator. From the award-winning author of The Passenger comes the first novel in the hilarious Spellman Files mystery series featuring Isabel “Izzy” Spellman (part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry) and her highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators. Tomalin’s analysis seeps into the gaps of Pepys’ diaries and fleshes them out beyond their limited time frame. This structure ensures depth, but doesn’t stop the book from feeling exciting and fast-paced. The chapters in this biography are split thematically rather than chronologically, allowing Tomalin to dive deep into Pepys’ mind and experiences without disruption. He impressively avoids the temptation of presenting himself in a favourable light, instead preferring to state events how they happened – even if he ends up coming across badly. Samuel Pepys is searingly honest and self-aware in his diaries. Not in this case! Far from being a dry mirror to the diaries, Claire Tomalin’s biography reads almost like a novel, her prose as lively and absorbing as Pepys’ own. You’d think a biography would pale in comparison to a flesh-and-blood diary with first-hand descriptions of The Great Fire of 1666 and The Great Plague of 1665. |