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Title: America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0-521-54175-1 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.08 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The First on the 1918 Pandemic--and still the best...
Comment: Crosby's classic study of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic-- while recently supplemented by John M. Barry's excellent new book THE GREAT INFLUENZA and Gina Kolatta's FLU-- remains the Source Authority for all serious students of this devastating killer virus.
While researching FINAL EPIDEMIC, my own novel of the re-emergence of the Spanish flu of 1918, Crosby's book was a goldmine of information... and a primary reason why I spent so many sleepless nights during the time I was writing on the subject.
Crosby's book is, without doubt, the classic study of the H1N1 killer flu virus and ranks among the best of medical non-fiction narrative around.
Frighteningly, killer flu and the possibility of a lethal pandemic is again a timely subject.
A startling fact about the original 1918 plague that devastated humanity --notable, since it occurred within the lifespan of many still alive today-- is the collective amnesia that so often surrounds that event.
Few Americans realize that it's extremely probable that they have a family member only a generation or two ago who fell prey to the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic; tales of when the cry "bring out your dead!" echoed along American streets were seldom passed from those who witnessed it to those of us who descended from the survivors. It takes a trip to virtually any cemetery to bring the death toll home to us, as marker after marker identifies the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. Worldwide, deaths in 1918-1919 totalled at least 40 million humans, and very likely as many as 100 million-- all within a timespan measured in months.
As I write this, an avian influenza virus not unlike that which triggered the 1918 pandemic, if forcing the mass slaughter of chickens and other birds throughout Asia. It is an attempt to forestall the very real possibility that the virus (which already has infected human victims through bird-to-human transmission, and currently has a 70 percent mortality rate among human victims) could acquire genes which would allow for human-to-human transmission.
During research for FINAL EPIDEMIC, I interviewed dozens of medical researchers and epidemeologists. Without exception, each stated that their greatest fear was a resurgence of a influenza virus similar to the 1918 variant, which through incubation in humans mutated into a unprecedented killer of humanity. Based on the cyclic nature of flu pandemics, I was told, mankind was already overdue-- and, worse: woefully unprepared-- for such an emerging viral Shiva.
Influenza was, and remains, a universal threat: As Crosby wrote in "America's Forgotten Pandemic," "I know how not to get AIDS. I don't know how not to get the flu."
--Earl Merkel
Author, FINAL EPIDEMIC (PenguinPutnam 2002)
and DIRTY FIRE (PenguinPutnam 2003)
Rating: 5
Summary: What do YOU know about the flu of 1918??
Comment: The title of this exceptional book is the understatement of the 20th Century. This was not your average killer flu! The handful of other killer flu's of the century (defined as 20,000+ deaths, a small fraction of the number who died in 1918), the kind with which we're all familiar, look mighty miniscule beside this virus that took its victims in a most painful and violent manner. This pandemic, which killed more soldiers than World War I, seems to have completely escaped the attention of America's under-informed and virus-obsessed media today. So much so that Crosby devotes a chapter to the fact that this major event--which, by the way, has never been fully explained--disappeared from the collective conscience as soon as it was over. Some of this undoubtedly was due to (1) no television, and (2) very little radio due to the war, and (3) the war. Because I assure you, if anything even remotely of this magnitude happened today, there would be absolute mass panic and hysteria: the economy might well come crashing to the ground for good. This mysterious and deadly virus remains unique in several ways, including the weird fact that it mostly attacked and killed people in the prime of their lives (20s and 30s). So devastated was port-city Philadelphia that coffins were stacked in the street. Coffin-makers naturally took advantage and price-gouged to the extent the US government had to intervene (kind of like gas immedately shooting up to $5 a gallon on September 11th in Indianapolis, Indiana). And on and on. There is nothing about this subject or this book that isn't shocking. As for the data, well, that's how good academic research is done, for crying out loud. If the author hadn't included the statistics, everyone would have denounced this as shoddy pseudoscience. Moreover, the startling mortality data are fascinating in their own right. An exceptionally well-written, riveting read.
Rating: 4
Summary: very good, but it has been overtaken by The Great Influenza
Comment: Without a doubt this is an excellent, provocative, and thoughtful book. In and of itself I'd give it 5 stars... But that would make it impossible to rate John Barry's The Great Influenza higher. Of course Barry's book came out 25 years after Crosby's, and to some extent is derivative. But it goes so far beyond Crosby, and adds so much context about scientists, the virus itself, and politics, there is unfortunately no reason to read Crosby any more. Actually that's wrong-- there is a reason. If you wnat tables and statistics, Crosby includes them. Barry does not. Although Barry's book does read better, and has a real narrative flow and scientist-characters.
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Title: Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Bari Kolata, Gina Kolata ISBN: 0743203984 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History by John M. Barry ISBN: 0670894737 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 05 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Purple Death : The Mysterious Flu of 1918 by David Getz, Peter McCarty ISBN: 080505751X Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Devil's Flu: The World's Deadliest Influenza Epidemic and the Scientific Hunt for the Virus That Caused It by Pete Davies ISBN: 0805066225 Publisher: Owl Books (NY) Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth A. Fenn ISBN: 080907821X Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub. Date: 02 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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