Author: John M. Barry
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143036494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 580
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Book Description
#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "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, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.
Author: Laura Spinney
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397681
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
In 1918, the Italian-Americans of New York, the Yupik of Alaska, and the Persians of Mashed had almost nothing in common except for a virus -- one that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times and had a decisive effect on twentieth-century history. The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth -- from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I. In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted -- and often permanently altered -- global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also created the true "lost generation." Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.
Author: Alan Warwick Palmer
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802137876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
Now in paperback, a distinguished historian recounts the myriad tragic blunders and the unprecedented, unfathomable bloodshed that was World War I in a fresh and revealing look at the war and its impact on the 20th century. Maps. of photos.
Author: Kirsty E. Duncan
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442692103
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
In 1918 the Spanish flu epidemic swept the world and killed an estimated 20 to 40 million people in just one year, more than the number that died during the four years of the First World War. To this day medical science has been at a loss to explain the Spanish flu's origin. Most virologists are convinced that sooner or later a similarly deadly flu virus will return with a vengeance; thus anything we can learn from the 1918 flu may save lives in a new epidemic. Responding to sustained interest in this medical mystery, Hunting the 1918 Flu presents a detailed account of Kirsty Duncan's experiences as she organized an international, multi-discipline scientific expedition to exhume the bodies of a group of Norwegian miners buried in Svalbard, all victims of the flu virus. Constant throughout is her determination to honour the Norwegian laws and the Svalbard customs that treat the dead and the living with respect - especially when a live virus, if unearthed, could kill millions. Another theme of the book is the author's growing love for Svalbard and its people. Duncan's narrative describes a large-scale medical project to uncover genetic material from the Spanish flu; it also reveals the turbulent politics of a group moving towards a goal where the egos were as strong as the stakes were high. The author, herself a medical geographer, is very frank about her bruising emotional, financial, and professional experiences on the 'dark side of science.' Duncan raises questions not only about public health, epidemiology, the ethics of science, and the rights of subjects, but also about the role of age, gender, and privilege in science. While her search for the virus has shown promising results, it has also revealed the dangers of science itself being subsumed in the rush for personal acclaim.
Author: Katherine Krohn
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 9781429601580
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
"In graphic novel format, follows the 1918 outbreak of a mysterious influenza virus that killed millions of people worldwide, making it the deadliest pandemic in history"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Alfred W. Crosby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107394015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives - more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event. This 2003 edition includes a preface discussing the then recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic.
Author: Jeanette Ingold
Publisher: Puffin Books
ISBN: 9780141306957
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
Coming of age in a rural Texas community in 1918, 15-year-old Asia assists in the local war effort, contemplates romance with a local boy, and expands her horizons through her pursuit of photography.
Author: Robert Gerwarth
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199546479
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
The story of an epochal event in German history, this is also the story of the most important revolution that you might never have heard of.
Author: Gina Kolata
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429979356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as 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 were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.
Author: Lynette Iezzoni
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Influenza 1918 is the true story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known -- a deadly virus that made its silent appearance 80 years ago at the start of World War I and went on to take the lives of over 600,000 Americans. In one month alone, October 1918, over 195,000 Americans were stricken with the disease and died. In Philadelphia, the city could not cope -- the dead were left in gutters and stacked in caskets on front porches. People hid indoors, afraid to interact with their friends and neighbors. "If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration", warned the Surgeon General, "civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few weeks".
