i read this book 13 or 14 years ago. really! (yes! i'm just adding it now!) not that it was forgotten. it has lived in the back of my brain ever since. when the anthrax scare happened, when i saw mr. death, whenever the X-files had episodes about strange diseases, whenever i think of sheep on rocky scottish islands (for reals! look up Gruinard Island), whenever W mentioned imaginary WMD's, and now, yesterday, when i listened to the new episode of radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/2012/jan/09/) and found out that fritz haber, father of biowarfare, lived in the city where i now live. in fact, the title of the book is from a quote by this lovely piece of work. this is what you get when you invent, and USE, chlorine gas: your wife kills herself in protest of your actions, your government is taken over by nazis, who first drive out jewish people like yourself and then take another of your inventions, zyklon A, and make it even deadlier, zyklon B, and more effective at killing off your relatives. that's just part of it. i'm beside myself and a little angry. just, i dunno, read the book. if you can stomach the fact that in WWI the opposition had no idea what mustard or chlorine gas were, so when they were hit with it they would run. the gas would overtake them and they would run, and then they would be gasping for air, so they would remove their gasmasks. gasping = quicker, more painful death full of mucus and blood and drowning in your own saliva and seriously, this book had an effect on me. duh. ( )

Not a fast read. But well told history, and there is more to the subject than most people today understand or appreciate. This topic should be much more widely understood. ( )

Excellent, but very disturbing, book about the history of biological and chemical warfare. ( )

Page 172 bookmarked by front cover flap and with handwritten notes there and on pages 58, 59, 61, 62, 130, 131, .. . and elsewhere