Plagued By Fear

Read John Mangels’ seven-part series, Plagued By Fear: Dr. Thomas Butler was the government’s go-to guy if you were worried about a plague attack – and in the hair-trigger months after Sept. 11, 2001, a lot of federal officials were. For parts of three decades, he had treated the Black Death’s bloated victims in the Third World. He’d plumbed the bacteria’s dark secrets in university labs in Cleveland, and later in Lubbock, Texas, searching for better ways to blunt its lethal kiss. After Jan. 11, 2003, none of that mattered. (Thanks, Mark.)