The Great Influenza The Story Of The Deadliest Pandemic In History

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At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic.

The Great Influenza


The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (originally subtitled The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History) is a 2004 nonfiction book by John M. Barry that examines the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst pandemic in history. Barry focuses on what was occurring in the United States at the time and attempts to place it against the background of American history and within the context of the history of medicine. The book describes how the flu started in Haskell County, Kansas, and spread to Camp Funston and around the world through troop movements during World War I.

Reviews

A 2004 Journal of Clinical Investigation review said that the book was "well conceived, well researched, and extremely well written" targeting a broad audience-physicians, scientists, medical students, and history buffs.

Reaction

In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush read the book while on vacation at his ranch in Crawford.[2] His study would later set forth plans for the federal government to prepare for future pandemics in a November 2005 speech.

The book is experiencing a surge in popularity as a result of the 2019-2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

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