The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

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Viking, 2004 - History - 546 pages
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.

In his powerful new book, award-winning historian John M. Barry unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its research, and spellbinding as he weaves multiple narrative strands together. In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward, risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.

"The Washington Post"'s Jonathan Yardley said Barry's last book can ?change the way we think.? "The Great Influenza" may also change the way we see the world.

From inside the book

Contents

PROLOGUE
1
THE WARRIORS
9
THE SWARM
89
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

John M. Barry was born in 1947. He is a widely respected journalist who has covered national politics extensively. He has used this background to write two highly acclaimed books of nonfiction. The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington (1989 is an examination of use and abuse of power. In Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1997), he revisits the power theme, but this time in the setting of a natural disaster. Barry is a careful researcher who documents the devastating facts of the flood and intertwines it with the fascinating story of powerful men and their selfish agendas. The conflict between the ruling class and black racists, the clash of former Senator LeRoy Percy and demagogue James K. Vardaman, the candidacy of Herbert Hoover, and the backlash election of Huey Long, all had roots in the policies surrounding the flood. Barry's political expertise comes from his years as Washington editor of Dun's Review, where he covered national politics. He has written for the Washington Post and magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and Esquire. The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, coauthored with oncologist Steven A. Rosenberg, has been published in twelve languages. Barry maintains two homes, one in New Orleans and another in Washington, D.C.

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