The Great Influenza
The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
About the book
The 1918 flu pandemic, one of the worst pandemics on record, is the subject of John M. Barry's 2004 history, focused on the United States and the history of medicine. Barry traces the virus from Haskell County, Kansas, to the army camp at Camp Funston and then around the world with troop movements during World War I, treating it as the first collision between science and epidemic disease. Part one profiles scientists such as William H. Welch and the rise of medicine at Johns Hopkins, and part two explains how viruses replicate, why this strain attacked the respiratory system, and how the immune system responds. A later edition adds an afterword on the threat of avian flu.
Ryan Holiday called it an incredible book by an incredible author, and it appears among the books NETOPIA mobilPay founder Antonio Eram suggested for understanding the world around us.
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This book has 2 recommendations
Antonio Eram (Founder & CEO/NETOPIA mobilPay)
This book was recommended by Antonio Eram, Founder of NETOPIA mobilPay, when asked for titles he would recommend to people interested in understanding the world around them.
Ryan Holiday (Author)
This is an incredible book by an incredible author (his Rising Tide I read many years ago and loved). "It was only influenza, it's only influenza," Barry says over and over again. Because that's what people were saying in 1918 as millions of people died, as the US and the world wrestled with an overwhelming pandemic for which they were not prepared. Cities held parades despite the warnings, people insisted on going to church, they declined to wear masks, they told themselves it was a hoax. History repeats itself, and we make the same mistakes over and over again, don't we? The book drags a little at the beginning but once it gets going, it'll sober you up and humble you real fast. In 2005, George W. Bush read this book, spoke with the author and instituted some basic pandemic preparations (not an illiterate leader—in fact, Bush was an underrated reader). And then most of these plans were forgotten about or dismantled and we told ourselves once again, it's only the flu, it's only the flu.
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