THE LIBRARY LIZARD

I was going to call this occasional feature "The Library Mouse," in honor of a small rodent I once spied in the main reading room of the New York Public Library. However, since my librarying is now done in the Beautiful Texas Panhandle, "The Library Lizard" seems more appropriate. In this feature I will, from time to time, call attention to books I have found in the library that I think readers of this blog would enjoy.

Today's pick is "Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service," by Maryn McKenna (Free Press, 2004), 303 pages, with bibliography. If you like a book that you can read in brief snatches of time, put down, and go back to without getting lost, you will enjoy this one. Each chapter is a complete and separate story, with the link being its connection to the EIS, a group of field investigators within the Centers of Disease Control.

Most chapters describe a mystery they are sent to solve--for instance, an outbreak of a strange new gay-related disease in California in 1981, the origin of a cluster of drug-resistant "staph" cases, the spread of tuberculosis among cross-dressers in Baltimore and New York. Other chapters describe their involvement in the anthrax attacks of 2001, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, early problems with the polio vaccine, and other cases. The doctors win some, lose some, but keep trying.

McKenna is a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and her beat is the CDC, which is headquartered there in Atlanta. The chapters in this book are expanded versions of earlier newspaper stories she did about the doctors who are CDC's "shock troops." These are great yarns, and she brings these doctors to life for the reader. A great read.