DEADLY FEASTS

Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes brings a century of scientific investigations into the cause of “mad cow disease,” which can infect many species of animals and even humans. Rhodes’s soft narration brings to life the discovery and investigation of the disease among cannibal tribes in New Guinea and its eradication when they stopped eating humans. He offers parallel investigations of similar symptoms that appeared in sheep and mink, and then in cows. Rhodes reads the various reports of scientists in a slightly louder voice, conveying the excitement of discovery, as well as the terrifying physical manifestations of this deadly disease. M.B.K. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 98]