Customer Reviews

The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare

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I would be more at ease if the President of the United States were writing this review instead of someone who has the influence of a water bug. In The Eleventh Plague, Leonard Cole has managed, without hysteria or banal melodrama, to write of the frightening dangers that humankind face in this post cold war era.

The Eleventh Plague is a brilliantly crafted book devoid of the scientific gibberish one comes to associate with such works.

I would strongly recommend The Eleventh Plague to any thoughtful reader who wishes to gain special insights into the nature of the biological and chemical weapon development that currently exists on our planet.

I was shocked by the "rant" of a previous reviewer. I found this book to be fascinating, as easy a read as many of the fictional Chem/Bio Warfare books, but absolutely factual. The hardcover edition on my shelf has been read by every member of my household, and has led to some interesting discussions - read it for yourself!

The Eleventh Plague is a great introduction to biological and chemical warfare. It is written in nontechnical language for the average layman.

The book gives a thorough overview of the history world as well as of the U.S. biological and chemical warfare program, and the politics of US leaders in the 1991 Gulf War. Cole discusses the importance of international agreements that ban chemical/ biological weapons, but he masterfully illustrates that treaties alone are not enough.

Altogether, The Eleventh Plague is a compelling book. I recommend it to anyone interested in chem/biological weapons history and policy. A great read!

I found this book to be interesting, but too technical at times. I am a fan of Robin Cook and this author was recommended. The plot of the story is excellent and yes, it is truely frightening, however I found the style of writing to be difficult to follow. I think the book would have been much more interesting if the lives of the victims would have been followed more closely (perhaps the result of their particular infection) rather than the clinical aspects. All in all though, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it as a "medical thriller"

I am as activist in this area as I can be. This sort of book doesn't help.

There are lots of footnotes in a book by a guy who can't put his thesis together without contradicting itself. It starts with his hand-wringing about zinc cadmium sulfide, and winds up with his fostering of repugnance.

By the end, he is claiming that treaties and verification can deal with the problem. What? At the very beginning, and on the book's dustjacket, it says that $10,000 is enough to set up a clandestine lab according to Kathleen Bailey. Hello? Anybody heard of the UNABOMer? Ted Kasczynski?

Nations, ladies and gentlemen, are NOT the problem here. Individuals and transnational terrorists are. Folks, we are in very deep trouble. We are in so deep it isn't funny at all.

That's why this book is so weird. Leonard Cohen seems to be aware that there is absolutely no way to put a lid on this (viz. the $10,000 lab Kathleen Bailey footnote). And yet he concludes by pushing the idea that we should just put a lid on it?! We should all just make sure nobody even thinks about doing this, and we shall be just fine? But wait! This book is not a bad primer/instruction manual!

It sure seems to me that considering the situation, if we get attacked, we better know how it can happen. We better know what the parameters are and how it all works. Leonard Cohen seems scandalized that we did testing in the USA. Would it have been more moral for us to do it over some other nation? Would it have been defensible for us not to do any such testing at all? I think not, and Mr. Cole does not even wave in the direction of talking about that. Does he honestly think it would be better if we didn't know how these things disperse?

Back to the context point - Mr. Cole does not seem to have any idea how many people die each year from taking aspirin, or even flu shots. I doubt he has even thought of comparing these tests to those.

All the way through, he makes no effort to set up comparables, nor to assess real risk in the testing that was done. Very low levels of almost anything are innocuous. The National Academy of Sciences clarified the issue with the zinc cadmium sulfide recently. The good professor here, forced a large amount of time, money and energy to be expended on what was known in 1958.

It's not a bad book to start with if you are a terrorist I suppose. But if you want to understand what we need to be doing, this book is a paragon of incredibly sloppy thinking, laced with such a plethora of footnotes and scholarship that it takes on the aura of invincible truth.