As a former Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1980s, I was pleased to learn of a new book on the EIS program, its history, and some of the successful epidemic investigations over the past decades. I also wanted to learn how Pendergrast had portrayed the EIS, since he was never in the organization and had not himself lived through any of the epidemic investigations as a “disease detective.” Of course, this text is not the only book on the history of the EIS (1, 2). However, it is perhaps the most informative of them to read, and I was pleased to find that Pendergrast showed a solid understanding of the program and its history. The author’s main purpose is to describe the history of the EIS program and to provide “behind the scenes” information on a variety of disease outbreaks—consistent with the title of the book. Although not apparently trained in medicine or in epidemiology, the author nonetheless presents the facts surrounding various disease outbreaks in a compelling manner with a very easy-to-read style.