The Anthrax Letters or Worlds Apart

The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story

Author: Leonard A Col

Conducting his own detective work, bioterrorism expert Leonard Cole has composed an account that gets right to the heart of all the noisy sound bites and hysterical headlines. Cole is perhaps the only person outside law enforcement to have interviewed every one of the surviving inhalotion-anthrax victims, along with the relatives, friends, and associates of those who died, as well as the public health officials, scientists, researchers, hospital workers, and treating physicians - indeed, anyone who has something of value to add to the story. Speaking through their voices, the narrative reflects the tension and emotions stirred by the events from that fall in 2001.

This minute-by-minute chronicle of the anthrax attacks recounts more than a history of recent current events; it uncovers the untold and perhaps even more important story of how scientists, doctors, and researchers perform life-saving work under intense pressure and public scrutiny. The Anthrax Letters is a spellbinding behind-the-scenes expose that amply demonstrates how vulnerable America and the world really were in 2001 - and how critical scientific research promises to strengthen our ability to address the challenges we must meet in the future.

Rocky Mountain News

For most of the 22 victims of the anthrax letters, Cole provides extensive detail on the circumstances surrounding their infection, diagnosis, treatment and eventual recovery or tragic death. … As an expert in bio-terrorism, Cole is at his best narrating the physicians' initial suspicion of anthrax infection, and the subsequent awakening of the massive national response network at the local, state and federal levels. …Cole provides a fascinating account of how quickly the diagnostic facts of medical science became national feelings of terror.

The Washington Times

Mr. Cole's new study is one of the most authoritative of the recent crop of books on the anthrax letters, and it is helped by the author's unfailingly clear writing style, which makes the biological threat of anthrax easy to understand. The narrative Mr. Cole weaves is undeniably intriguing.

Roll Call

And while it can at times deliver all the drama of a modern-day thriller, the 240-page book also offers the most complete look available at the still-unsolved mystery of how and why 22 people became infected with anthrax between Oct. 4 and Nov. 21, 2001.

Newsday - James P. Pinkerton

The Anthrax Letters offers us a wealth of detail on the case — even as it reminds us how little we know.

DingBat Magazine

The subject of bioterrorism is probably not high on your holiday reading list, but The Anthrax Letters ought to be. It is absolutely riveting. Here's a promise. Read the prologue and you'll read the book. … [Cole is] a superb writer and his book reads like a fine-tuned suspense novel. The story, of course, is not fiction, but a true mystery that probes behind the panic of the anthrax attack of 2001. Cole undertook his own, enlightened investigation, and has interviewed all of the surviving victims whose stories—until now—have remained out of the news. There are also fascinating portraits of the doctors, researchers, and scientists who worked behind the scenes amid the storm of events. Like the spores themselves, secrets are swirling, and the author brings them into the light in this inspired account.

Publishers Weekly

On October 5, 2001, Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor for the tabloid newspaper the Sun, became the first confirmed bioterrorism fatality in the U.S. Over the next several weeks, nearly two dozen people were diagnosed with anthrax, five of whom died. Disentangling a coherent story from the snarl of conflicting reports, multi-agency responses, blaring headlines, empty leads and the shaky scientific data surrounding the anthrax attacks is no simple task, which makes Cole's accomplished book all the more impressive. As an expert on the intersection of politics and terrorism, Cole (The Eleventh Plague) takes the reader on a captivating, no-nonsense tour of America's public health system, where physicians, scientists and administrators work tirelessly to establish protocols and policies, task forces and education programs, emergency response strategies and stockpiles of vital medicines to safeguard the country from a potentially catastrophic bioterror event. The book also supplies the chilling details that the short-lived media flareup failed to convey-such as the durability of anthrax spores, which can lie dormant but remain lethal for hundreds of years; the contamination of massive postal facilities that remain unsafe even after multimillion-dollar clean-up efforts; the difficulties involved in diagnosing many anthrax cases, which can display ambiguous symptoms; and the persistent, residual effects of the disease. Without even a hint of sensationalism, this disquieting but hopeful book skillfully zeros in on the most crucial issues and scientific advances as well as the heroic individuals who averted disaster while under the intense glare of public scrutiny. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

For years, most Americans thought a bioterrorist attack happened only on television or in thrillers, but the anthrax attacks of 2001 have changed that forever. Cole (political science, Rutgers Univ.; Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare) examines in detail the events surrounding the attacks, which caused 22 people to come down with anthrax and five people to die. Cole provides excellent insights into how the attacks affected the victims, their families, and society, revealing the horror, fear, and confusion as well as efforts by the government and public health services to react quickly and appropriately. While he includes many of the same basic facts presented in Marilyn W. Thompson's The Killer Strain, both books provide a fascinating discussion of the attacks and how they will influence our level of preparedness for the future. By focusing on different individuals and organizations, the books complement each other nicely and offer different perspectives of the events. Recommended for undergraduate and public library collections.-Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida at St. Petersburg Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Carefully drawn chronology of the anthrax episodes of September and October 2001. They came and went at such speed and at such an overwhelming time that it is pardonable to remember the anthrax-bearing letters as a bad dream. But five people died from them, and this tight narrative of the events makes it clear that they were a mortal cog in the wheel that led to Homeland Security, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Bioterrorism expert Cole (Political Science/Rutgers Univ.; The Eleventh Plague, not reviewed, etc.) also makes it baldly clear that the letters' nasty cargo might easily have claimed many more lives if health professionals hadn't acted with admirable intuition and dispatch, rising to the occasion like latter-day Minutemen. Anthrax's reputation precedes it: a biblical plague, a hyper-amplifying bacterium that can blossom from a cluster of spores smaller than the eye of an ant into a gruesome blood sludge that kills or curses its victims. The author sketches vivid portraits of the bacteria, those who were infected, and those whose job it was to counter the threat and prepare the nation for biological attack. He describes the sparse and tentative information doctors had to work from, the difficulty of diagnosis, and the crucial roles played by the Centers for Disease Control, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. To give the story greater scope, Cole also touches upon the smallpox eradication campaign, the fight against biological weapons, the evolving first line of defense against chemical and biological attack, and the sorry history of anthrax hoaxes over the past decade.Despite the impressive containment work of health professionals, an unsettling story of all-too-accessible weapons. Agent: John Thornton/Spieler Agency

What People Are Saying

Richard Preston
>The Anthrax Letters is a terrific read. The book is a masterful piece of reporting, written with absolute strength and clarity, and the background research Cole has done is slam-on right, impressive in its detail and insight. Cole talked to all kinds of sources no other reporter was able to reach, and he turned the research into a first rate work of narrative describing the first major bioterror event the modern world has seen. (author of "The Demon in the Freezer")

Tom Daschle
The anthrax attacks of 2001 took five lives and terrified a nation. Leonard Cole assumed the massive task of considering how these unprecedented attacks touched us individually and collectively, and he skillfully put them in a context that will help us understand how they unfolded and how we might address the bioterrorist threat in the future. The Anthrax Letters is a compelling human story told with scientific integrity. (Senate Minority Leader )

Congressman Christopher Shays
The most effective antidote to biological terrorism is information. Only frank discussion of our vulnerabilities and preparedness will inoculate us against the most contagious agent we face: fear. Leonard Cole makes an invaluable contribution to that discussion with this in-depth look at the people, places and events involved in the 2001 mail-borne anthrax attacks. When the final chapter is written, and the case is solved, this book will have helped point the way to a safer America. (Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations)

Larry M. Bush, M.D.
Luck perhaps has been most accurately defined as where the road of preparation crosses the road of opportunity. For me, these two paths met when I encountered an ill Bob Stevens on October 2, 2001. Leonard Cole's chronicle of the anthrax attacks records with detailed accuracy the medical epidemiological and investigative aspects of these historical events. His narrative is fascinating, insightful, and thought-provoking.

Table of Contents:

	Prologue
1	Deadly Diagnosis	1
2	American Media	22
3	The Nation at Risk	47
4	Ultimate Delivery: The U.S. Mail	72
5	The Outliers	95
6	D. A. Henderson, the CDC, and the New Mind-Set	115
7	A Scientist's Race to Protection	138
8	Terror by Hoax	160
9	Who Did It?	185
10	Loose Ends	212
	Epilogue	238
	Bibliography	241
	Acknowledgments	255
	Index	259

See also: Organizational Identity or Business and Professional Communication

Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750

Author: Jean Christophe Agnew

Worlds Apart traces the history of our concepts of the marketplace and the theater and the ways in which these concepts are bound together. Focusing on Britain and America in the years 1550-1750, the book discusses the forms and conventions that structured both commerce and theater. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and documents, Professor Agnew illuminates one of the most fascinating chapters in the formation of Anglo-American market culture.