The Great Influenza
John M. Barry is the authors of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America; Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports; The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer (cowritten with Steven Rosenberg); and The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington. He splits his time between New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History is a 2004 nonfiction book by John M. Barry that examines the 1918 flu pandemic, one of the worst pandemics in history. Barry focuses on what was happening in the United States at the time and attempts to contextualize it against the backdrop of American history and within the context of medical history. The book describes how the flu began in Haskell County, Kansas, USA, and spread to the US Army training camp Camp Funston, Kansas, USA, and around the world during World War I through troop movements.
The Great Influenza, with its magisterial scope and depth of research, provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry summarizes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."
At the height of World War I, the most lethal influenza virus in history erupted in a Kansas army camp, moved east with American troops, and then exploded, killing up to 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 months than AIDS did in 24 years, and it killed more people in a year than the Black Death did in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 was the first time science and epidemic disease collided.
Author: John M. Barry
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143036491
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 9442 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #12,734 in Books
#7 in Viral Diseases (Books)
#9 in Communicable Diseases (Books)
#22 in History of Medicine (Books)
