The great influenza the epic story of the deadliest plague in history
"In the winter of 1918, the coldest the American Midwest had ever endured, history's most lethal influenza virus was born. Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100 million people. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more peo...
| Main Author: | Barry, John M., 1947- |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Viking,
c2004.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
"In the winter of 1918, the coldest the American Midwest had ever endured, history's most lethal influenza virus was born. Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100 million people. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century. There were many echoes of the Middle Ages in 1918: victims turned blue-black and priests in some of the world's most modern cities drove horse-drawn carts down the streets, calling upon people to bring out their dead." "But 1918 was not the Middle Ages, and the story of this epidemic is not simply one of death, suffering, and terror; it is the story of one war imposed upon the background of another. For the first time in history, science collided with epidemic disease, and great scientists - pioneers who defined modern American medicine - pitted themselves against a pestilence. The politicians and military commanders of World War I, focusing upon a different type of enemy, ignored warnings from these scientists and so fostered conditions that helped the virus kill. The strain of these two wars put society itself under almost unimaginable pressure. Even as scientists began to make progress, the larger society around them began to crack." "Yet ultimately this is a story of triumph amidst tragedy, illuminating human courage as well as science. In particular, this courage led a tenacious investigator directly to one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century - a discovery that has spawned many Nobel prizes and even now is shaping our future."--Jacket. |
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| Physical Description: |
546 p. : ill. ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [507]-527) and index. |
| ISBN: |
0670894737 (alk. paper) 9780965911429 9780143036494 |
| Author Notes: |
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. (Bowker Author Biography) |