Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic Of 1918 And The Search For The Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata

3.71 AVERAGE

herbivore1964's review against another edition

5.0
Excellent book and highly recommend it! There are some very interesting parallels with COVID-19 current events.

joannawarrens's review against another edition

4.0
I enjoyed this book but it did not focus on the events of the 1918 flu. Mostly it was about the scientific hunt for the virus. I enjoyed this part but would have liked more of 1918 events.

carmelita_f's review

3.0
challenging informative mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

spinsterfun's review against another edition

3.0
This book primarily focuses on people studying the 1918 flu in the 90s. There is very little about how the disease spread during and after WWI and how it affected people. The studies are interesting and it's amazing that scientists were able to tease virus fragments out of old tissue from flu victims, but I had expected more about what things were like in 1918.

The chapter about the attempts to immunize the entire country against flu in the 70s was informative but so, so boring. None of the scientists talked about there came to life in that story the way they did in other chapters.

erin_j_reads's review against another edition

3.0
This was interesting and I enjoyed it. Some parts of it dragged but others were page-turners. It was interesting to read in the middle of another pandemic, for sure.

rc_hof's review against another edition

4.0
informative slow-paced

milkywaycrossing's review against another edition

5.0
This book isn’t about the human toll of the Spanish flu. Instead, it’s about scientists searching to find the virus itself. It’s a fascinating read. Unlike a fiction novel, the book doesn’t have a nice, clean ending with everything solved. Scientists don’t know everything about the 1918 flu.

I read this book during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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bmreal92's review against another edition

3.0
This book was very interesting in the beginning and end. I felt that you get bogged down in the middle of the book with diseases not connected to influenza and then the swine flu mishap. I also think the book went too in depth with the people connected to the study of influenza. I didn’t really see the point in knowing everyone’s life story and why they decided to study the flu. I also wish that there was a disclaimer that says that scientist do not know exactly why the influenza of 1918 was so deadly but have 2 very plausible theories.
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annemaries_shelves's review against another edition

4.0
challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced
This was a really great exploration of the 1918 pandemic - full of anecdotes, data, and an impressive amount of investigative journalism to tie all these pieces together over 80+ years of activity. Given that it was published in 1999, there's a lot more research done since and the contexts of SARS, H1N1 2009, COVID-19, and the new, emerging bird flus that could really re-contextualize the original (in many ways) pandemic. I really recommend Flu for those who love science history - there's not a lot of the broader societal impacts/effects, but enough I think to satisfy those who love the narrative and impact elements vs the science, research, and political tie-ins (because science always comes against politics). I will note the first chapter explores the 1918 pandemic as it's happening, and it feels VERY familiar to those of us who have experienced COVID-19 - I wasn't able to read it in 2020 when I first picked it up, but 2o24 gave me enough distance to handle the content. 

witchboyofboston's review against another edition

3.25
adventurous dark hopeful informative reflective medium-paced
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