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A review by chrysemys
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
2.0
2.5*
This book has been on my radar for quite a long time, it wasn't just current events that have whetted my interest. It has been rather disappointing.
There was a lot of material about the beginning of the American medical establishment that seemed extraneous--the message could have been conveyed in 20 pages rather than 80. And many of the numerous physicians and scientists who would end up looking for the source/treatments/cure of the infection were introduced early and then not seen again until much later in the book... I was not willing to go back and remind myself who was who and, as usual, these men mostly became conflated with one another in my mind. (I was able to keep track of the two women.) Possibly it is a failing of my own but I suspect a lot of other people have trouble keeping track of such a (necessarily) large cast of characters. Those are higher order issues, executive decisions in structuring the book and perhaps it would be fair for the author to say that it isn't his fault that I wanted to read a different story than the one he was trying to tell. (He didn't manage to sell me on his story, though.)
The ordinary writing and editing left a lot to be desired. There were a lot of unclear sentences that could have been improved with minor tweaks. More unsettling, some of the factual material was not right, the most egregious example of which was the author's reiteration of the common misconception that deoxygenated blood is blue. It is a very dark red and may appear bluish when viewed through the skin. Surely the author has had blood drawn? (And if not, how did the physicians who reviewed the manuscript miss this obvious error?) I was able to identify some other misrepresentations here and there but it is the non-obvious stuff that I didn't catch that concerns me about the book.
This history of the 1918 flu pandemic was also far too US-centric. Although most of the world became so overwhelmed with war and pestilence that records are understandably incomlete, I am willing to bet cash money there was a fair amount of information recorded by Germans in both the scientific and military communities. Reading about the spread of the virus through Europe (even though--or perhaps especially because--it was full of war at the time) would be of interest, regardless of how spotty the information might have been. But at least for the US, this history seemed thorough.
As always, I want more visualizations in this sciencey history book--timelines, graphs of casualty rates among different ages/locations/dates/etc, maps--in addition to the photographs. So much easier placing events in time and space if there is a timeline to go along with the words.
This story has a lot of familiar elements. It is depressing how little people have learned.
This book has been on my radar for quite a long time, it wasn't just current events that have whetted my interest. It has been rather disappointing.
There was a lot of material about the beginning of the American medical establishment that seemed extraneous--the message could have been conveyed in 20 pages rather than 80. And many of the numerous physicians and scientists who would end up looking for the source/treatments/cure of the infection were introduced early and then not seen again until much later in the book... I was not willing to go back and remind myself who was who and, as usual, these men mostly became conflated with one another in my mind. (I was able to keep track of the two women.) Possibly it is a failing of my own but I suspect a lot of other people have trouble keeping track of such a (necessarily) large cast of characters. Those are higher order issues, executive decisions in structuring the book and perhaps it would be fair for the author to say that it isn't his fault that I wanted to read a different story than the one he was trying to tell. (He didn't manage to sell me on his story, though.)
The ordinary writing and editing left a lot to be desired. There were a lot of unclear sentences that could have been improved with minor tweaks. More unsettling, some of the factual material was not right, the most egregious example of which was the author's reiteration of the common misconception that deoxygenated blood is blue. It is a very dark red and may appear bluish when viewed through the skin. Surely the author has had blood drawn? (And if not, how did the physicians who reviewed the manuscript miss this obvious error?) I was able to identify some other misrepresentations here and there but it is the non-obvious stuff that I didn't catch that concerns me about the book.
This history of the 1918 flu pandemic was also far too US-centric. Although most of the world became so overwhelmed with war and pestilence that records are understandably incomlete, I am willing to bet cash money there was a fair amount of information recorded by Germans in both the scientific and military communities. Reading about the spread of the virus through Europe (even though--or perhaps especially because--it was full of war at the time) would be of interest, regardless of how spotty the information might have been. But at least for the US, this history seemed thorough.
As always, I want more visualizations in this sciencey history book--timelines, graphs of casualty rates among different ages/locations/dates/etc, maps--in addition to the photographs. So much easier placing events in time and space if there is a timeline to go along with the words.
This story has a lot of familiar elements. It is depressing how little people have learned.