A review by stopthatimp
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

3.0

This book was interesting but logically inconsistent. It has the usual white dude problem of minimizing the experiences of other people (including claiming racism didn't matter in 1918, a chapter after talking about horrific racism resulting in deaths). And the scientists he talks about at the end aren't the ones he extensively profiled in the beginning. I get the sense the book got away from him a little. Additionally, his framing device of the 1918 pandemic as a race of man vs nature falls through when he's finally forced to disclose that nature won, and man lost the race. He never really explicitly says what it is we know about the 1918 virus now. So - a good book, but kind of incomplete and inconsistent in places.