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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
This young reader's version of John Barry’s “The Great Influenza” focuses on the course and consequences of the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. It comes in at about 200 pages (the original version had a hefty 500+ pages) so it’s a quick read. It keeps the most compelling parts of the story, but doesn’t go into quite as much detail as the original.
Why read a book about a pandemic that happened more than 100 years ago? Simply put, the parallels between that pandemic and our own recent one are striking. In its second wave, the flu was killing rapidly. Scientists raced to figure out what it was and to find a cure (or a way to prevent it). Governments (federal and state) responded to varying degrees. Citizens responded in a variety of ways (from helping at the risk of their own lives to refusing to help anyone).
“The Great Influenza” directly discusses the scientific method and the development of a working hypothesis in a crisis situation. This is one of the many fascinating aspects of the story.
The Afterword is very much worth the read. Barry describes the process the U.S. government has taken to formulate a pandemic response (from WELL before COVID-19). He also discusses the role of leadership in shaping public behavior to mitigate the effects of a pandemic.
Classroom considerations: This would be a great book to explore in a U.S. history or government class. It would be interesting to have students explore government responses to outbreaks of disease across the 20th century and into the 21st century.
This book is great for teens and adults who like microhistories, the history of public health, the history of disease, or general history.
I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and Penguin Young Readers Group, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Why read a book about a pandemic that happened more than 100 years ago? Simply put, the parallels between that pandemic and our own recent one are striking. In its second wave, the flu was killing rapidly. Scientists raced to figure out what it was and to find a cure (or a way to prevent it). Governments (federal and state) responded to varying degrees. Citizens responded in a variety of ways (from helping at the risk of their own lives to refusing to help anyone).
“The Great Influenza” directly discusses the scientific method and the development of a working hypothesis in a crisis situation. This is one of the many fascinating aspects of the story.
The Afterword is very much worth the read. Barry describes the process the U.S. government has taken to formulate a pandemic response (from WELL before COVID-19). He also discusses the role of leadership in shaping public behavior to mitigate the effects of a pandemic.
Classroom considerations: This would be a great book to explore in a U.S. history or government class. It would be interesting to have students explore government responses to outbreaks of disease across the 20th century and into the 21st century.
This book is great for teens and adults who like microhistories, the history of public health, the history of disease, or general history.
I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and Penguin Young Readers Group, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Very comprehensive covering of the 1918 influenza, including the molecular biology of viruses and the bacteriology work that was done. Very interesting especially in light of our experiences with COVID.
The pandemic is the vehicle for this book's exploration of the creation of modern medicine. It is a brilliant book, gripping as a thriller and filled with fascinating detail. Highly recommended.
There’s too much individualist/colonialist/neoliberal “brilliant male minds of history” type stuff here, but there is also good information and stories. Also unnecessary stories, like the entire last quarter of the book being about the post-1918 careers of his special science superstars. The stuff about how their latter-day work led to flu discoveries felt relevant but I didn’t want to know so much about various SciGuys’ thwarted lab dreams, marriage dissolutions and academic in-fighting, etc. I know he’s trying to humanize and tell it like a story people can understand but…actually if that’s your aim why all the pages and pages of stuff about cell and virus structures and stuff that we laymen, or at least me laywoman, couldn’t begin to understand? Pick a lane, John Barry! Anyway, after what we had all gone through reading so much about a devastating world wide pandemic it felt like the SciGuy stuff should been a 5-page post-script, like the book equivalent of Fast Times at Ridgemont High-esque “where are they now” end-of-movie blurbs.
It was really interesting to know more about the flu and the historical context of the time. And it was jaw dropping to learn that Wilson’s flubbing (understatement lol) of the WWI Paris Peace Accord might have been because of his mental state post-flu infection! That would mean that the flu contributed even more directly to the conditions that led to WW2 than I’d previously thought. On that tip, wish he would have talked more about how the fascists used the fear born from the pandemic to introduce and stoke the eugenicist and ethnic cleansing ideology in Nazi Germany (and beyond). Also as long as I’m wishing I would have liked him to use the Wilson flu and subsequent stroke as an “in” to talk about the post viral illnesses/syndromes/outcomes that exist with every serious virus. That feels important right now since we have found out with long covid that most are at best ignorant of and at worst totally in denial about that. I’ve seen some articles recently that are like “Weird! There’s now ‘Long Flu’ too?!” There’s always been long flu, babes. I’ve read that heart disease wasn’t our number one killer until after the 1918 flu and the huge rise could have been a result of it. That’s the kind of lasting impact of the 1918 flu that just feels so relevant today while in the thick of a mass disabling event.
It was infinitely depressing but necessary amid the (ONGOING) covid pandemic to see how much worse we’ve done with covid even with much more advanced medicine, science and technology. And covid is really what makes it impossible for me to endorse this book despite learning a lot from it and liking much of it. Maybe I shouldn’t judge this book for stuff its author said 20 years after its publication but I do and I always will. John Barry has understandably been interviewed about covid quite a bit as a pandemic expert (and this book went back on the best seller list in 2020). He did say a lot of good stuff that few others were saying publicly, like that we were “ceding control to the virus,” and cautioning people not to move on too quickly, etc. But he’s also said really disappointing stuff. I saw an interview with him in 2022 at the height of Omicron saying we were “almost” at a place where we could “move on” from covid. The interviewer said omicron was “milder” than previous variants as if it was a simple, known fact and he didn’t challenge it. Maybe at that time he believed that but - why? Why would he accept hubristic, unverified, minimizing narratives when he took such care in this book to call out the press and public health for lying and minimizing? He even cautioned in his swine flu postscript that being absolutely truthful with the public was the most important thing we could do when faced with future pandemics, but now he’s contributing to the distortion and minimization.
He also said he was never in favor of closing schools. And in many interviews he’s talked about how “shocking” it was for “everyone in public health” that the virus was politicized, and that the federal government presented themselves as a “back up” instead of being at the forefront of the fight. But in this book he spends a lot of time talking about the political climate at the time of the 1918 flu, and the fact that the federal public health agencies were useless minimizers afraid to endanger the war effort with downer news and seem vulnerable to US enemies in the war, that the press was compromised and minimizing and censoring information, and that President Wilson never even addressed the virus publicly! So why, WHY, is covid being politicized at all “shocking” to him?
Also I can’t find anything recent from him so he’s apparently stopping talking about it. He’s probably “moved on.” Probably hitting up brunches unmasked, denying it’s still a pandemic, labeling any attempt at this point to mitigate the virus as “illiberal,” etc. Hey, prove me wrong, John Barry! Go on MSNBC and eviscerate the Biden administration’s covid response! Do a New York Times op ed calling out the New York Times for its reprehensible covid journalism! Urge the public health school you work at to reinstate masks in classrooms and prioritize air quality!
I don’t want to rag on someone for not being “perfect” in their thinking but is it wrong to expect someone who obviously spent years and years doing in depth historical research on pandemics and is known as a world renowned expert who influences public health policy to be…better than this? Actually yeah it IS unquestionably wrong to expect better from the shitlib halls of academia and the shitass public health establishment. The master’s tools will not dismantle the masters’s house etc. I probably shouldn’t have even read this book. And I definitely shouldn’t be wasting this much time writing a good reads review nobody will ever, eeeeeeeveerrr read. Hey, if any non existent people reading this review know of a good leftist/people’s history of the 1918 flu let me know!
It was really interesting to know more about the flu and the historical context of the time. And it was jaw dropping to learn that Wilson’s flubbing (understatement lol) of the WWI Paris Peace Accord might have been because of his mental state post-flu infection! That would mean that the flu contributed even more directly to the conditions that led to WW2 than I’d previously thought. On that tip, wish he would have talked more about how the fascists used the fear born from the pandemic to introduce and stoke the eugenicist and ethnic cleansing ideology in Nazi Germany (and beyond). Also as long as I’m wishing I would have liked him to use the Wilson flu and subsequent stroke as an “in” to talk about the post viral illnesses/syndromes/outcomes that exist with every serious virus. That feels important right now since we have found out with long covid that most are at best ignorant of and at worst totally in denial about that. I’ve seen some articles recently that are like “Weird! There’s now ‘Long Flu’ too?!” There’s always been long flu, babes. I’ve read that heart disease wasn’t our number one killer until after the 1918 flu and the huge rise could have been a result of it. That’s the kind of lasting impact of the 1918 flu that just feels so relevant today while in the thick of a mass disabling event.
It was infinitely depressing but necessary amid the (ONGOING) covid pandemic to see how much worse we’ve done with covid even with much more advanced medicine, science and technology. And covid is really what makes it impossible for me to endorse this book despite learning a lot from it and liking much of it. Maybe I shouldn’t judge this book for stuff its author said 20 years after its publication but I do and I always will. John Barry has understandably been interviewed about covid quite a bit as a pandemic expert (and this book went back on the best seller list in 2020). He did say a lot of good stuff that few others were saying publicly, like that we were “ceding control to the virus,” and cautioning people not to move on too quickly, etc. But he’s also said really disappointing stuff. I saw an interview with him in 2022 at the height of Omicron saying we were “almost” at a place where we could “move on” from covid. The interviewer said omicron was “milder” than previous variants as if it was a simple, known fact and he didn’t challenge it. Maybe at that time he believed that but - why? Why would he accept hubristic, unverified, minimizing narratives when he took such care in this book to call out the press and public health for lying and minimizing? He even cautioned in his swine flu postscript that being absolutely truthful with the public was the most important thing we could do when faced with future pandemics, but now he’s contributing to the distortion and minimization.
He also said he was never in favor of closing schools. And in many interviews he’s talked about how “shocking” it was for “everyone in public health” that the virus was politicized, and that the federal government presented themselves as a “back up” instead of being at the forefront of the fight. But in this book he spends a lot of time talking about the political climate at the time of the 1918 flu, and the fact that the federal public health agencies were useless minimizers afraid to endanger the war effort with downer news and seem vulnerable to US enemies in the war, that the press was compromised and minimizing and censoring information, and that President Wilson never even addressed the virus publicly! So why, WHY, is covid being politicized at all “shocking” to him?
Also I can’t find anything recent from him so he’s apparently stopping talking about it. He’s probably “moved on.” Probably hitting up brunches unmasked, denying it’s still a pandemic, labeling any attempt at this point to mitigate the virus as “illiberal,” etc. Hey, prove me wrong, John Barry! Go on MSNBC and eviscerate the Biden administration’s covid response! Do a New York Times op ed calling out the New York Times for its reprehensible covid journalism! Urge the public health school you work at to reinstate masks in classrooms and prioritize air quality!
I don’t want to rag on someone for not being “perfect” in their thinking but is it wrong to expect someone who obviously spent years and years doing in depth historical research on pandemics and is known as a world renowned expert who influences public health policy to be…better than this? Actually yeah it IS unquestionably wrong to expect better from the shitlib halls of academia and the shitass public health establishment. The master’s tools will not dismantle the masters’s house etc. I probably shouldn’t have even read this book. And I definitely shouldn’t be wasting this much time writing a good reads review nobody will ever, eeeeeeeveerrr read. Hey, if any non existent people reading this review know of a good leftist/people’s history of the 1918 flu let me know!
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
A lot of information in this book was hardly related to the 1919 influenza pandemic and could have been cut. The book kept going off on tangents and I expected the information to become relevant at some point, but it never did.
The strongest part of the book for me was the section explaining what the influenza viruses does to the body, and what made the 1919 pandemic so deadly. It was horribly disturbing and I will be getting my flu shot every year. TBH if I read a book about infectious disease and don’t have at least one panic attack because of it, 0 stars. So points for that.
The strongest part of the book for me was the section explaining what the influenza viruses does to the body, and what made the 1919 pandemic so deadly. It was horribly disturbing and I will be getting my flu shot every year. TBH if I read a book about infectious disease and don’t have at least one panic attack because of it, 0 stars. So points for that.
Haunting to read this book in the context of today’s COVID-19 pandemic. A very interesting and thorough book; however, I felt it covered much more than was necessary in terms of the history of the US medical system & the individual players. It seemed many facts and key points were repeated multiple times. I struggled to understand the relevance of much of the background that was provided. Still, there are many lessons to be learned from this ordeal, which clearly we have not heeded.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
slow-paced
The Great Influenza was a great read cover to cover. I found it really relevant and bizarre how much things haven't changed in a 100 years, since we are now living through the second year of a global pandemic with covid. The same advice is given: wear a good mask, don't hang out in large groups, etc. At least some of the technology has changed, like better lab equipment for those studying the behaviorof the virus, vaccination is more common, etc.