About this item
Heroic science. Unleashed billionaire entrepreneurs. Chaotic politics. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive through compulsively readable, first-time reporting on the players driving the race against a vicious pandemic. The First Shots, soon to be the subject of an HBO limited series with superstar director and producer Adam McKay (Succession, Vice, The Big Short) , draws on exclusive, high-level access to weave together the intense vaccine-race conflicts among hard-driving, heroic scientists and the epic rivalries among Washington power players that shaped 18 months of fear, resolve, and triumph. From infectious disease expert Michael Callahan, an American doctor secretly on the ground in Wuhan in January 2020 to gauge the terrifying ravages of Disease X; to Robert (Dr.
About the Author
Brendan Borrell is an award-winning journalist and the author of The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and the Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine, which tells the inside story of Operation Warp Speed. Over the last fifteen years, Brendan's essays and reporting have appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, National Geographic, and the New York Times. He has tracked down the Canadian maple syrup thieves, penetrated the secretive world of British mole catchers, and come face-to-face with the most powerful man in parrot-collecting. As a correspondent for Outside magazine, he searched for a whimsical French adventurer who went missing in Alaska and participated in a survival competition for gun enthusiasts. Brendan grew up in Texas and received a Ph. D. in biology from UC Berkeley in 2006 before turning full-time to journalism. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
