The Devil's Flu

The Devil's Flu PDF Author: Pete Davies
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805066227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In 1918, the Spanish flu killed up to 40 million people across the planet. From the remotest villages in Arctic climates to crowded U.S. cities to the battlefields of Europe, there were plague houses in which whole families lay sick or dead. In Madras, train services stopped running, as one-third of its workforce fell ill. In Calcutta, the postal service and the legal system ground to a halt. And in the United States, it killed more Americans than all the wars fought in the twentieth century put together. The disease did not discriminate. It took whom it pleased -- rich or poor, distinguished or humble, hungry or well nourished, healthy or infirm. It was a flu unlike any that the world had encountered before or that has come along since.

The Devil's Flu

The Devil's Flu PDF Author: Pete Davies
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805066227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
In 1918, the Spanish flu killed up to 40 million people across the planet. From the remotest villages in Arctic climates to crowded U.S. cities to the battlefields of Europe, there were plague houses in which whole families lay sick or dead. In Madras, train services stopped running, as one-third of its workforce fell ill. In Calcutta, the postal service and the legal system ground to a halt. And in the United States, it killed more Americans than all the wars fought in the twentieth century put together. The disease did not discriminate. It took whom it pleased -- rich or poor, distinguished or humble, hungry or well nourished, healthy or infirm. It was a flu unlike any that the world had encountered before or that has come along since.

Flu

Flu PDF 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.

Very, Very, Very Dreadful

Very, Very, Very Dreadful PDF Author: Albert Marrin
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 1101931485
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
From National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin comes a fascinating look at the history and science of the deadly 1918 flu pandemic--and its chilling and timely resemblance to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. In spring of 1918, World War I was underway, and troops at Fort Riley, Kansas, found themselves felled by influenza. By the summer of 1918, the second wave struck as a highly contagious and lethal epidemic and within weeks exploded into a pandemic, an illness that travels rapidly from one continent to another. It would impact the course of the war, and kill many millions more soldiers than warfare itself. Of all diseases, the 1918 flu was by far the worst that has ever afflicted humankind; not even the Black Death of the Middle Ages comes close in terms of the number of lives it took. No war, no natural disaster, no famine has claimed so many. In the space of eighteen months in 1918-1919, about 500 million people--one-third of the global population at the time--came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known, but the best estimate is between 50 and 100 million. In this powerful book, filled with black and white photographs, nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines the history, science, and impact of this great scourge--and the possibility for another worldwide pandemic today. A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year!

Inside the Hurricane

Inside the Hurricane PDF Author: Pete Davies
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780805066111
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In Inside the Hurricane, Pete Davies sweeps readers from the Caribbean to the Bay of Bengal, describing both the horrifying violence and the eerie beauty of hurricanes. He explains the weather conditions that foster them; discusses in lucid detail how scientists predict, measure, and track them; and delves into mysteries scientists are still trying to solve. From apocalyptic devastation in Central America to a frantic race against time in Miami, Pete Davies take you as close to the storm as it's possible to go. He tracks the greatest hurricanes in history and takes you along for a wild ride as he recounts his experiences following and flying directly into the worst storms of 1999 with the scientists who do it for living; he explores the science of why hurricanes occur and how to predict their onslaughts more accurately; and he describes the mounting panic of those frantically making preparations as 1999's biggest storm, Floyd, looms. A winning combination of history, science, and adventure, Inside the Hurricane leaves readers with a chilling reminder of nature's enduring domination over man. Going face to face with nature at its most violent, Inside the Hurricane is a gripping, frightening, and brilliantly instructive book about the deadliest storms known to man.

The Great Influenza

The Great Influenza PDF 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.

Beating Back the Devil

Beating Back the Devil PDF Author: Maryn McKenna
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 9781439123102
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The universal human instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease like Ebola. These doctors run toward it. Their job is to stop epidemics from happening. They are the disease detective corps of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal agency that tracks and tries to prevent disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks around the world. They are formally called the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)—a group founded more than fifty years ago out of fear that the Korean War might bring the use of biological weapons—and, like intelligence operatives in the traditional sense, they perform their work largely in anonymity. They are not household names, but over the years they were first to confront the outbreaks that became known as hantavirus, Ebola, and AIDS. Every day they work to protect us by hunting down the deadly threats that we forget until they dominate our headlines, West Nile virus, anthrax, and SARS among others. In this riveting narrative, Maryn McKenna—the only journalist ever given full access to the EIS in its fifty-three-year history—follows the first class of disease detectives to come to the CDC after September 11, the first to confront not just naturally occurring outbreaks but the man-made threat of bioterrorism. They are talented researchers—many with young families—who trade two years of low pay and extremely long hours for the chance to be part of the group that are on the frontlines, in the yellow suits and masks, that has helped eradicate smallpox, push back polio, and solve the first major outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, toxic shock syndrome, and E. coli O157 and works to battle every new disease before it becomes an epidemic. Urgent, exhilarating, and compelling, Beating Back the Devil takes you inside the world of these medical detectives who are trying to stop the next epidemic—before the epidemics stop us.

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza

The Threat of Pandemic Influenza PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

Devil in the Grove

Devil in the Grove PDF Author: Gilbert King
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062097717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A must-read, cannot-put-down history.” — Thomas Friedman, New York Times Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old girl cried rape, McCall pursued four young black men who dared envision a future for themselves beyond the groves. The Ku Klux Klan joined the hunt, hell-bent on lynching the men who came to be known as "the Groveland Boys." Associates thought it was suicidal for Marshall to wade into the "Florida Terror," but the young lawyer would not shrink from the fight despite continuous death threats against him. Drawing on a wealth of never-before-published material, including the FBI's unredacted Groveland case files, as well as unprecedented access to the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund files, Gilbert King shines new light on this remarkable civil rights crusader.

Influenza

Influenza PDF Author: Jeremy Brown
Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
ISBN: 9781432865009
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, veteran ER doctor and Director of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, explores the troubling and complex history of the flu virus. He breaks down the current dialogue about the disease, explaining the controversy over vaccinations, antiviral drugs, and the federal government's role in preparing for pandemic outbreaks. Influenza is an enlightening and unnerving look at a deadly virus that has been around longer than people and may be for many more years before we are able to conquer it for good.

The Dancer and the Devil

The Dancer and the Devil PDF Author: John E. O'Neill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684512832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Communism must kill what it cannot control. So for a century, it has killed artists, writers, musicians, and even dancers. It kills them secretly, using bioweapons and poison to escape accountability. Among its victims was Anna Pavlova, history’s greatest dancer, who was said to have God-given wings and feet that never touched the ground. But she defied Stalin, and for that she had to die. Her sudden death in Paris in 1931 was a mystery until now. The Dancer and the Devil traces Marxism’s century-long fascination with bioweapons, from the Soviets’ leak of pneumonic plague in 1939 that nearly killed Stalin to leaks of anthrax at Kiev in 1972 and Yekaterinburg in 1979; from the leak of a flu in northeast China in 1977 that killed millions to the catastrophic COVID-19 leak from biolabs in Wuhan, China. Marxism’s dark past must not be a parent to the world’s dark future. COMMUNIST CHINA PLAYED WITH FIRE AND THE WORLD IS BURNING Nearly ten million people have died so far from the mysterious Covid-19 virus. These dead follow a long line of thousands of other brave souls stretching back nearly a century who also suffered mysterious “natural” deaths, including dancers, writers, saints and heroes. These honored dead should not be forgotten by amnesiac government trying to avoid inconvenient truth. The dead and those who remember and loved them deserve answers to two great questions. How? Why? The Dancer and the Devil answers these questions. It tracks a century of Soviet and then Chinese Communist poisons and bioweapons through their development and intentional use on talented artists and heroes like Anna Pavlova, Maxim Gorky, Raoul Wallenberg and Alexis Navalny. It then tracks leaks of bioweapons beginning in Saratov, Russia in 1939 and Soviet Yekaterinburg in 1979 through Chinese leaks concluding in the recent concealed leak of the manufactured bioweapon Covid-19 from the military lab in Wuhan, China. Stalin, Putin, and Xi, perpetrators of these vast crimes against humanity itself, should not be allowed to escape responsibility. This book assembles the facts on these cowardly murderers, calling them to account for their heartless crimes against man concluding in Covid-19.