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Title: Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic by Gina Kolata ISBN: 0-7432-0398-4 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 09 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.28 (101 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best books I have read in a while!
Comment: Flu by Gina Kolata is one of the best-written, most interesting books I have read in a long time. It is an exciting history of the 1918 influenza pandemic and the science behind its subsequent explanation. I originally purchased this book because it was offered at a discounted price and looked (based on the cover) interesting, not because I had any special interest in epidemeology or the author. Now, after reading Flu, I would like to know more about both!
The story of the 1918 flu pandemic is frightening. Reading about it left me pondering the same question posed by the author to herself in the opening pages of her book: I am a scientist, I have taken a college microbiology class, so why haven't I heard about an illness that killed 20 million people (at least) in the span of a year? This flu, after mildly foreshadowing its presence at the close of the 1917-1918 season, struck hard over the course of a few weeks in the fall of 1918 and continued its march around the world for the rest of the season. It affected everything about people lives that year, from where it was legal to cough to who was able to at least put men on the field of the War to End All Wars.
The subsequent history of trying to explain what happened in 1918 is also compelling. Several interesting personalities are involved, each in their different fields trying to shed new light on the old story-- virologists infecting pigs and ferrets, molecular biologists trying to get DNA from long-stored tissue, physicians trying to recover frozen virus in Alaska and a Canadian geographer with a talent for drawing media attention to her work.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with eyes. Its only possible shortcoming may be in the cursory explanation certain technical aspects receive. However, if readers don't already know a little about molecular biology (including DNA/viral replication and PCR), it is worth having to do a little research to get up to speed.
Rating: 3
Summary: Deceptively titled
Comment: FLU: THE STORY OF THE GREAT INFLUENZA PANDEMIC OF 1918 AND THE SEARCH FOR THE VIRUS THAT CAUSED IT starts out impressively with a chapter on the influenza pandemic of 1918, which globally caused the caused the deaths of at least 20-40 million people (and perhaps up to 100 million), followed by a chapter on the history of disease pandemics and death in history. I thought, wow, this could be another riveting book like 1994's HOT ZONE, which was inspired by the Ebola virus. However, in its middle chapters, FLU drifted off course to a discussion of other flu scares of the late 20th century, specifically the Swine Flu fiasco of 1976 and the Hong Kong Flu panic of 1977. In retrospect, neither was relevant to the deadly 1918 virus except to illustrate the epidemiologists' fixation with influenza as a potentially catastrophic killer. Thus, the book should perhaps have been titled FLU: THE BOGEY MAN UNDERNEATH EPIDEMIOLOGISTS' BEDS. Moreover, though author Gina Kolata did return to the "search for" subtheme, even that fizzled by the end. The hunt for the 1918 virus, and a delineation of what made it so uniquely vicious, remains a story whose ending remains to be written. The HIV virus has replaced the influenza virus as the focus of the scientific community's investigative efforts.
There was one aspect of FLU that I did find notable, and that was a hint of gender bias on the part of the author towards the book's three principal "heroes": Dr. Johan Hultin, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, and Dr. Kirsty Duncan. All three attempted to recover the 1918 virus from the lung tissue of victims that died from the disease. Hultin, a San Francisco pathologist, went looking for corpses of Eskimos buried in the Alaskan permafrost. Duncan, a geographer by profession, organized the exhumation of dead miners buried at Spitzbergen, Norway. Taubenberger, an MD/PhD researcher with the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, went rummaging among tissue samples preserved in paraffin blocks stored for decades at the institute. Kolata admiringly described the professional pedigrees and accomplishments of both Hultin and Taubenberger, but virtually ignored Duncan, except to infer that her "long hair and doe eyes and raw emotions" may have had an unsettling effect on the marriage of one of her team members. Oh, and that Duncan's own marriage broke up. (Was this relevant? Who cares?) Moreover, images of Hultin and Taubenberger hard at work are featured in the volume's too paltry section of photographs, but not Duncan. And, in the "Acknowledgements", the author thanks Hultin and Taubenberger for their "extraordinary assistance", but no gratitude, however lukewarm, is awarded Duncan. Do I perceive some cattiness here? Meow!
I found FLU marginally interesting, but it in no way met expectations. I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're obsessed with the subject matter.
Rating: 4
Summary: about right for the armchair crowd
Comment: If you're looking for a highly detailed and relatively technical discussion you might find this book a little light. However, if you, like me, have just the general exposure to the subject of epidemics, their causes and consequences, you are likely to have a good read here.
A couple times Ms. Kolata's prose and approach get a little dramatic but it doesn't get in her way as far as telling the story and a little honest feeling for the subject is hardly a bad thing.
Comparisons to 'The Hot Zone' are inevitable but not quite accurate. 'The Hot Zone' deals with diseases still very much a threat and almost supernaturally spooky in their virulence and mystery. 'Flu' is more a forensic look at a disease that is familiar and whose flirtation with serious mortality has, so far, been a one-time thing.
Say 'Ebola' to someone and they react: where is it? how bad is it? is this the time it will get loose? Say 'flu' and most people shrug. We've all been there, done that. Influenza is a familiar, if unwelcome, guest every year. Reading Ms. Kolata's book won't exactly have you hiding under your bed come next flu season, but you might not be quite so inclined to cavalierly skip the innoculation campaign either.
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Title: America's Forgotten Pandemic : The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred W. Crosby ISBN: 0521541751 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 21 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The 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: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Viruses, Plagues, and History by Michael B. A. Oldstone ISBN: 0195134222 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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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 Press Pub. Date: 05 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance by Laurie Garrett ISBN: 0140250913 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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