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kfor24's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating and frightening, but worth reading even with trepidation.
The last lines of the book, written in 1998, will haunt me:
"It is hard to be complacent. Would a new killer flu look just like the 1918 flu? Or was that virus more of an example of what could happen if a flu virus was perfectly made to be a deadly foe? Will the next terrible influenza virus be a new strain that is, in its own way, ideally made to kill? Jeffrey Taubenberger, for one, thinks we cannot predict what the next flu virus will look like. The only hope we have is vigilent surveillance, keeping a careful eye out for the rough beast whose hour has come at last."
The last lines of the book, written in 1998, will haunt me:
"It is hard to be complacent. Would a new killer flu look just like the 1918 flu? Or was that virus more of an example of what could happen if a flu virus was perfectly made to be a deadly foe? Will the next terrible influenza virus be a new strain that is, in its own way, ideally made to kill? Jeffrey Taubenberger, for one, thinks we cannot predict what the next flu virus will look like. The only hope we have is vigilent surveillance, keeping a careful eye out for the rough beast whose hour has come at last."
yahyahyah's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Interesting account of the hunt for the actual virus that caused the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Written at the cusp of genomic research, it leaves off just as the main discoveries are about to be made but is a very entertaining history of flu research nonetheless. Would love to see an updated version.
amia's review against another edition
4.0
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I was surprised. There are a few names and details that are repeated but I believe it was in effort to make a more cohesive tale and to remind us of who did what or when. My Dad was born in 1920 and I had never heard any of his family mention this pandemic. It is informative with out being boring and a good eye for personal, individual as well as group incidents.
acehinter's review against another edition
Most of the book focused on the search for the influenza virus, only dedicating two chapters about what life was like in 1918-1919. The pacing was slow and I had no interest in continuing after 100 pages.
thebookfrog's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Yikes. Gives one a great respect for viruses and even more respect for the brilliant, dogged researchers who pursue lead after lead to crack their codes.
prairie_fairie's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting report about flu primarily in the 20th century, spanning several continents, several flu strains and involving many governments and scientific researchers. This is an interesting biography on flu, but it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the 1918 pandemic. Well written.
eyegee's review against another edition
3.0
Gina Kolata is a great writer, however I'm surprised that she undertook this book and gave it this title since its central question -- why was the 1918 flu virus SO deadly? -- has not yet been solved. She does a great job of setting the stage, describing the impact of the epidemic, and introducing the work of scientists who have tried to solve the mystery. But as the book closes the work has not yet revealed an answer. This was a real anticlimax. Given the advances in biology and gene technology, I expect that an answer will be known within 5 years. As author, I would have been tempted to sit on my research until that day.
betsychadwell's review against another edition
4.0
The title is a little bit of a misnomer. It's not so much a history of the pandemic -- just a portion of the first chapter is devoted to that -- as a history of the efforts of scientists subsequent to the actual pandemic to understand where it came from and why it was so lethal. As many as 100 million killed worldwide. The book is also frustrating, because it ends without any resolution to those questions, but with a tease that results are just around the corner. It was published in 1999, so I'm hoping there may be something more recent that may provide some answers.
That said, it was a very good read. Well written, compelling, almost like a detective story, with interesting characters throughout. A reasonable amount of technical biological detail about the virus was handled well. Not too heavy for a non-scientist.
That said, it was a very good read. Well written, compelling, almost like a detective story, with interesting characters throughout. A reasonable amount of technical biological detail about the virus was handled well. Not too heavy for a non-scientist.