Book Report - Febuary - Quality Evaluation Essay

The book I read was 'Deadly Feasts', written by Richard Rhodes, in 1997.

As for the legitimacy, I felt that this book was very reliable and well written . It

had directly used the names of real doctors (Creutzfedlt, Jakob, Gajdusek, ect)

who had studied an actual disease (Kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, ect) The use

of actual names was very supporting to the credibility of this book. Doctor

Gajdusek is a well respected neurologist, and his research is well credited as

being the foundation of neurology for the early 1900s and early 2000s. Although

Deadly Feasts was written quite some time ago, and that may raise suspicion on

the reliability of the research that Rhodes used to write Deadly Feasts. Gajdusek

was one of the first neurologist doctors to professionally and extensively research

the virus of Kuru, so whatever he 'discovered' was practically put down in pen.

here have been challenging sources since his death in 1997, and most of his

research is still held as true to the medical world. Neurology is a shady subject,

as we do not have full understanding of how our brain works, so it is hard for

professionals to tell what is right and what is not.


The quality of the actually writing was outstanding. The author, Richard Rhodes,

is an author of non-fiction. He has written many other books including The 

Making of The Atomic Bomb which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction.


The language used in 'Deadly Feasts' is of a higher reading level, and it can be

hard to understand if you have a declined knowledge in the medical fields. It uses

some very large words, such as "encephalopathies", (page 193), which spellcheck

does not even know. There are also some parts of this book that may make the

weak of heart nauseous, as it talks about some sickening subjects such as the

Swiss swine investigations (page 216).


In conclusion, this book is very reliable but hard to understand. Although the

book is similar to the Hot Zone, as they both focus on severe diseases in remote

locations of the word. The Hot Zone does not require as much of a medical

background, and it sticks to one story line throughout the book. Deadly Feasts is

a bit jumpy in information, as it does not focus directly on one case, but rather

the disease as a whole. Deadly Feasts actually references The Hot Zone (page1).

The connections that Deadly Feasts makes, to both doctors and other books,

fortifies its credibility. My final opinion of Deadly Feasts is the following:

Deadly Feasts is a reliable and well written, but hard to understand non fictional

story of the research of doctor Gajdusek, and the virus of Kuru.



Note - This was manually double spaced, sorry if any of the formatting looks odd, but I do not have Microsoft Word on my computer.