The current Ebola outbreak in Africa has returned Reston to the literary map.
Richard Preston’s 1994 book The Hot Zone is No. 8 this week on the The New York Times’ nonfiction list of combined print and e-book best sellers.
The Hot Zone chronicles the strain of Ebola that was found in a Reston laboratory nearly 25 years ago.
Reston was the site of the only Ebola outbreak on U.S. soil. In 1989, test monkeys from the Philippines housed at the former Hazelton Laboratories at Isaac Newton Square were discovered to have the virus after dozens of animal at the lab began dropping dead.
The United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was called in to investigate, and Ebola Reston, as it came to be called, was found to be a strain of the virus that is spread through the air but did not affect humans.
Hundreds of monkeys were euthanized and the lab was eventually torn down. Kindercare now sits in its place.
Stephen King, the master of the horror novel, has called The Hot Zone “one of the most horrifying things” that he had ever read.
The World Heath Organization reports more than 1,300 people have died from the latest outbreak, which has been reported in Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia
Image: Anchor Books
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