As the world braces for a potential Avian Flu pandemic, the 2003 SARS outbreak now seems even more relevant as the harbinger of crises to come. In China Syndrome, Karl Taro Greenfeld tracks the outbreak of SARS from the bedside of one of the first Chinese victims to cutting-edge labs where researchers struggled to identify and subdue the virus to the war rooms at the World Health Organization, where officials desperately tried to determine the extent of the epidemic. In exploring how globalization, coupled with rampant development, is ushering in a new chapter in the history of human health, Greenfeld gives a crucial blueprint for how an epidemic starts Ì¢‰â” and how next time it might not be stopped.

Karl Taro Greenfeld has been an editor and writer for TIME and Sports Illustrated, among other publications. From 2002 until 2004 he was the editor of TIME Magazine’s Asian edition, based in Hong Kong. The author of two previous books about Asia, Speed Tribes and Standard Deviations, he currently lives in New York City.