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Flu – The story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it by Gina Kolata. It is an engrossing, fascinating book that looks at the 1918 epidemic that wiped out approximately 40 million people in less than a year and afflicted more than one of every four Americans. This is the same type of swine flu that we are dealing with in 2009, and could be a look into the near future if the swine flu re-occurs this fall.
This tragedy, just after World War I and far more deadly, so traumatized the survivors that few would talk about it afterward. Kolata reports on the scientific investigation of this bizarre outbreak, in particular the attempts to sequence the virus' DNA from tissue samples of victims. She also reviews the social and personal effects of the disease, from improved public health awareness to the loss of productivity. The disease affected 20- to 40-year-olds disproportionately.
From the inside jacket of the book: When we think of plagues, we think of AIDS, Ebola, anthrax spores, and of course the Black Death. But in 1918 the great flu epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the pandemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. More American soldiers were killed by 1918 flu than were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra succumbed to the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. If such a plague returned today, taking a comparable percentage of the population with it, 1.5 million Americans would die, which is more than the number killed in a single year by heart disease, cancers strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s combined.
Flu – The story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it by Gina Kolata (1999)
ISBN 0374157065
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