The Great Influenza

The story of the deadliest pandemic in history

by John M. Barry, Barry, John M.

546 pages

English language

Published Oct. 4, 2005 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-14-303649-4
OCLC Number:: 64487722

(21 reviews)

At the height of WWI, 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. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

15 editions

zhliu0124 reviewed The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Review of 'The Great Influenza' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

If the author assign a title for each chapter, then most of the chapters would have a title like "The influenza was scary, death was everywhere!" The cases the author told us were so redundant because most of them looked the same. Which makes it worse is the numbers of the death in most of the cases were not as scary as the author was trying to told us.

The reason why the author picked those three people to highlight is not clear to me. It seems to me that these three people didn't make huge contributions to understand the influenza. And the story of Lewis is not related to the influenza at all!

The science part is fine, though I wish he could give us more about what we have learnt from this pandemic.

José María (Chema) Mateos reviewed The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Review of 'The Great Influenza' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Le sobran la mitad de las páginas.

GG reviewed The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Review of 'The Great Influenza' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Having read several books on Spanish Flu, this is the most interesting one I've read to date. Covers both the scientific and sociological aspects well.