Panic in Level 4 by Richard Preston

Panic in Level 4 by Richard Preston
During high school, we got an extra credit assignment to read Hot Zone, another book by Richard Preston. That book was about Ebola outbreaks. I don't remember many of the details, but I remember being fascinated by his vivid descriptions of the illness, and of the wonderful descriptions of how all of the agencies involved worked. Having these wonderful memories of a book from my youth, when I saw this book in my local library, I decided it would move to the head of my reading list. I was not disapointed.
It was much different than what I was anticipating, however. I had envisioned a high energy story that brought together all of the themes mentioned in the cover. What I found was a series of 4-5 shorter stories with small bits of interconnection.
One of the stories was very interesting to me as a computer programmer as it talked about two mathemeticians who build a supercomputer in their apartment that competes with some of the fastest machines in the world. They use this machine to calculate pi to many, many decimal places.
Much of the book talks about DNA and the mapping of the human genome. It was very interesting to read about the different projects and personalities working on this research. It also talked about some genetic disorders in great detail. Definitely something that makes you realize how lucky most of us are to be free of that type of problem when you're just one marker in your DNA away from having serious problems.
This was a very interesting book. It held my interest throughout, and was a fairly quick read.