"The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

614.54 BAR available at Bluffton and Hilton Head

"Surely one of the best, if not the best non-fiction book I've ever read. This 2004 publication is a captivating page turner about a tragic period in our nation that my grandmother touched on many, many years ago but I never followed up on. She told me my mother, two years old at the time, almost died during the influenza pandemic of 1918 but she never portrayed how devastating it was. When you read the opening chapters you'll be intrigued by the state of the medical profession in our county in the mid 1850s and the affect the war in Europe had on the pandemic. From the layman-clear medical explanations for the mechanics of our body fighting disease to the lives of the men and women who stepped into the breach to invent new ways to fight disease contrary to all methods practiced at the time, provides the reader with such admiration for these scientific pioneers. Doctors didn't require scientific education, much less licenses. Microscopes were very few and never used. The world was getting smaller but World War I was raging in Europe and our boys were flocking from our farms to go fight in Europe. This is a fascinating story of medical heroism tainted by shady morals in truthful reporting and disastrous military management of troops in the face of impending doom. This pandemic is history's most lethal influenza virus "killing more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years". 100 million died from influenza "but it was only influenza". Though terrifying, this book represents "the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease" and should be required reading. A wonderful book."

Review provided by Russ Menz, Bluffton Branch Library