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The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.51809041
EAN: 9780670894734
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0670894737
Label: Viking Adult
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: February 09, 2004
Publisher: Viking Adult
Release Date: February 05, 2004
Studio: Viking Adult
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Editorial Review:
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.
In his powerful new book, award-winning historian John M. Barry unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its research, and spellbinding as he weaves multiple narrative strands together. In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward, risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.
The Washington Posts Jonathan Yardley said Barrys last book can change the way we think. The Great Influenza may also change the way we see the world.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Hot Read
A detailed look at the horrible influenza epidemic that decimated not only the United States but most of the world in 1918, killing tens of millions and sickening many more. An excellent job of explaining the biological and medical complexities of the disease, detailing the history of often shoddy medical education in the United States, and relating the Spanish flu's human and emotional toll through vivid anecdotes of personal hardship and horror. The book reads well as a medical detective story ... Read More
Rating: - The Great Influenza
I liked this book it is a big thick book that takes a long time to read. If you enjoy history and you know it repeats itself. It is an interesting book to buy.
Rating: - informative but "wordy"
This book contains some excellent information, but i would recommend the abridged version. I don't feel the personal lives & quirks of all of the scientists involved in the story added any insight to this pandemic.
Rating:  - Missed opportunity
To me, this book really represented a missed opportunity to tell a potentially fascinating story. I found *The Great Influenza* long, overwritten, repetitive, and, most important (as several have noted) telling only the American side of a worldwide pandemic. Sometimes, the author seemed to be so in love with a particular theme or trope that he strained the narrative beyond all reason to fit it in. One of the more egregious examples was the long tale, at the book's end, of the career decline and ... Read More
Rating: - More than just a history
There are a lot of good reviews describing this book, so I will just say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was difficult at times to track with the story because it weaves back and forth on itself so that you understand the whole story. Worth reading.
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