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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
A sweeping and engrossing book, which is more frighteningly relevant than ever now that we find ourselves in the midst of another pandemic. I learned a lot from this book, far beyond a timeline of a historic event. It is a dense, but surprisingly quick read. Highly recommend.
Read "Pale Rider" by Laura Spinney instead.
You'll be treated to an objective and significantly more global perspective on the 1918 pandemic than with this book. John M. Barry seems bent on weaving a narrative about American heroes and exceptionalism in ending the pandemic, Spinney seems more focused on reporting the facts and theories that aren't country specific.
Note: this is a DNF for me. I seldom give up on books, but nothing in this made me want to keep going past chapter 3. Every turn of the page made me more and more convinced not to keep reading.
You'll be treated to an objective and significantly more global perspective on the 1918 pandemic than with this book. John M. Barry seems bent on weaving a narrative about American heroes and exceptionalism in ending the pandemic, Spinney seems more focused on reporting the facts and theories that aren't country specific.
Note: this is a DNF for me. I seldom give up on books, but nothing in this made me want to keep going past chapter 3. Every turn of the page made me more and more convinced not to keep reading.
Unfortunately there is a such thing as too much contextual history. This needs to be cut down and re-edited badly. I enjoyed parts of it, but it repeats itself a lot.
I got around halfway before dnfing, I really wanted to like this so I'm quite disappointed. I'll end up reading a wiki article or something else to not get bogged down with too much information.
I got around halfway before dnfing, I really wanted to like this so I'm quite disappointed. I'll end up reading a wiki article or something else to not get bogged down with too much information.
I chose to listen to The Great Influenza because I wanted to understand the parallels with the current Covid epidemic. Although the epidemic was a devastating event for the world in 1918 and 1919, it has almost disappeared from our country's collective memory. I became intrigued by it a few years ago when I read Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell. That book opens when her lead character contracts the flu and loses most of her family. How could such a terrible episode in history be forgotten?
I am not sure if Mr. Barry actually answers that particular question. He has written a detailed history that is equal parts science and history. The first third of the book is really about the state of medicine and medical education in the United States leading up to World War I. The founding of Johns Hopkins University and the efforts to improve the experience and education of doctors is the main theme of this part of the book.
The description of the pandemic and the effects that it had on the country and the world, including the end of WWI and the peace talks, takes up the middle third. And the last third is about the scientific effort to identify and duplicate the virus in laboratories so that it can be studied..
Since the book was completed in 2004, there is nothing specifically about our current pandemic. But Mr. Barry does address misinformation and disinformation, particularly during the war. Newspapers were instructed not to publish stories about the disease. Fake remedies also sprang up, in the absence of a vaccine or a cure. He also writes that there will be future pandemics which must be prepared for and that supply chains can be easily disrupted by widespread disease. Topical indeed.
I listened to the audio (19+ hours). The narrator, Scott Brick, is excellent. The drawback is that I could not easily go back and check something mentioned earlier in the book.
Highly recommended.
I am not sure if Mr. Barry actually answers that particular question. He has written a detailed history that is equal parts science and history. The first third of the book is really about the state of medicine and medical education in the United States leading up to World War I. The founding of Johns Hopkins University and the efforts to improve the experience and education of doctors is the main theme of this part of the book.
The description of the pandemic and the effects that it had on the country and the world, including the end of WWI and the peace talks, takes up the middle third. And the last third is about the scientific effort to identify and duplicate the virus in laboratories so that it can be studied..
Since the book was completed in 2004, there is nothing specifically about our current pandemic. But Mr. Barry does address misinformation and disinformation, particularly during the war. Newspapers were instructed not to publish stories about the disease. Fake remedies also sprang up, in the absence of a vaccine or a cure. He also writes that there will be future pandemics which must be prepared for and that supply chains can be easily disrupted by widespread disease. Topical indeed.
I listened to the audio (19+ hours). The narrator, Scott Brick, is excellent. The drawback is that I could not easily go back and check something mentioned earlier in the book.
Highly recommended.
The science is incredible. The author's penchant to ramble on about seemingly inconsequential things is not.
informative
A detailed book on the 1918-1919 Influenza pandemic-how it started (from Kansas, US), how it spread all over the world (through US army participating in WWI), how the US government, army, scientific society and general public dealt with the pandemic, and its lasting impact.
The book is very dry to read. The writing is repetitive and it drags on and on. Part 1 is the development of American medical science (public health study, John Hopkins Medical School etc...). Part 2 is mostly US politics (Woodrow Wilson, WWI and how wartime censorship was implemented). The rest is about the pandemic. The book should be better titled as "The Great Influenza and How the US Dealt With It", because it covers only a little outside the United States.
At least 50m people (5% world population) had been wiped out by the pandemic, which is equivalent to 390m people today. There were three waves in the pandemic, the second wave the worst. In US, the condition in East Coast was worse than the west coast. San Francisco managed relatively well among big cities in US. Scientists did not find out the pathogen until many years later. The genome of the virus was sequenced in 2005.
What strikes me most is that how the US politics today regarding Covid-19 has much in common with what happened in the 1918-1919 pandemic. Human race have memories as short as those of a gold fish.
The book is very dry to read. The writing is repetitive and it drags on and on. Part 1 is the development of American medical science (public health study, John Hopkins Medical School etc...). Part 2 is mostly US politics (Woodrow Wilson, WWI and how wartime censorship was implemented). The rest is about the pandemic. The book should be better titled as "The Great Influenza and How the US Dealt With It", because it covers only a little outside the United States.
At least 50m people (5% world population) had been wiped out by the pandemic, which is equivalent to 390m people today. There were three waves in the pandemic, the second wave the worst. In US, the condition in East Coast was worse than the west coast. San Francisco managed relatively well among big cities in US. Scientists did not find out the pathogen until many years later. The genome of the virus was sequenced in 2005.
What strikes me most is that how the US politics today regarding Covid-19 has much in common with what happened in the 1918-1919 pandemic. Human race have memories as short as those of a gold fish.
Fascinating read on what I thought would only be the story of the 1918 flu pandemic, but became a page turner on the beginnings of modern scientific laboratory medicine in the US and the amazing men (for the most part) who undertook this task with fury. I was also stunned to find how the course of WWI war pact was changed by the effects of the flu on US President Wilson’s brain. The flaws of this pact, leaving Germany in a dire mess, are a leading component to the rise of Hitler and WWII. I knew the later, but not the former referring to the flu brain disease. There’s so much to know about everything.