Pale Rider

Laura Spinney is a literary novelist and science journalist. She has two novels in English, and her science writing has appeared in National Geographic, Nature, the Economist, and the Telegraph, among other publications. Rue Centrale, her oral history portrait of a European city, was published in French and English in 2013.

In 1918, the Italian-Americans of New York, the Yupik of Alaska, and the Persians of Mashed shared almost nothing except a virus—one that triggered the worst pandemic in modern history and had a decisive impact on twentieth-century history. Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the most devastating human disasters in history. It infected one-third of the world's population, from New York's poorest immigrants to the King of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. Despite a death toll of 50 to 100 million people, it is remembered as an afterthought to World War I.

In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus spread across the globe, exposing humanity's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. The Spanish flu was as socially significant as both world wars, dramatically disrupting—and often permanently altering—global politics, race relations, and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts. Spinney claims that it was partly responsible for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also gave rise to the true "lost generation." Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity, drawing on the most recent research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology, and economics.

Author: Laura Spinney

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Pale-Rider-Spanish-Changed-World/dp/1541736125/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 1777 reviews)

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