Do not read this book if you are experiencing pandemic anxiety; it will be just too close to home. Lawrence Wright extensively researched this novel, which makes it all the more terrifying. Epidemiologist Henry Parsons is in Indonesia when hemorrhagic fever kills several people in a refugee camp. He tracks his driver and the virus to the hajj in Mecca, where three million pilgrims may have been exposed, and the terror explodes from there. The consequences of this global pandemic are catastrophic and even more so when it begins to appear that the disaster may have been orchestrated as an attack on the U.S. Although the ending feels improbable, Wright’s research is thorough enough that you believe, against hope, that if it is unlikely that humans could be this cruel and stupid, if they were, we would be doomed.