About this title: Victims of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 suffered horrifying effects, including bleeding from the ears and nose, and they usually died. It killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages did in a century. In the United States, where there weren't enough coffins to house the increasing numbers of bodies, nearly seven times ...
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Description: Good. Clean text thru-out, no marks-Couple pages in front appear to have been slightly damp at bottom-Cover shows light usage wear (scuffed edges/corners)-Tight binding-We ship out fast daily w/FREE tracking on this item-(Gotta have it fast? ) Expediated shipping is available on this item (Personalized Service~Always Bubble Envelope~ Expediated moves you to front of the line) read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean inside out, tight binding, good cover. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 546 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: New. 0143036491 Brand New Book, never read-tracking In 1918, a plague swept across the world virtually without warning, killing healthy young adults as well as vulnerable infants and the elderly. Hospitals and morgues were quickly overwhelmed; in Philadelphia, 4, 597 people died in one week alone and bodies piled up on the streets to be carted off to mass graves. But this was not the dreaded Black Death-it was "only influenza. " In this sweeping history, Barry (Rising Tide) explores how the ... read more
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Description: Very Good. 0143034480 paperback in very good condition. Pages are clean, binding is tight. Cover has slight shelf wear. Appears gently read. Satisfaction Guaranteed. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin USA, E Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780143034483ISBN:0143034480
Description: Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Reading-and shelf-wear: minor creasing, edges worn, corners bumped, photo pages slightly rumpled. "In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza 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 weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.. ... read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. 2020-Name marked out in front. Barely used. In great shape. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 546 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
"I enjoyed this book but it was really long and repetitive. I'm certainly not an expert on editing, but there was way too much repetition. Some ideas were repeated three or four times using the exact same words. This book should have been cut to about half its finished length.
Having said that though, I finished. After checking it out three times and renewing each checkout the maximum number of times (one) I took 18 weeks to finish. That's got to be a record for me. I'm glad the library had two copies so I could check out the other as I returned the first. I was interested in what happened. I was in suspense about how scientists finally discovered and identified the flu virus but I don't think he ever told us. He wrote a lot about discovering DNA as the building blocks of genetics, the politics of scientific research in the early Twentieth Century, even the everyday politics of the early Twentieth Century. And I was fascinated by all that, which is why I kept reading. There was really some interesting stuff in the book. It was just soooo long."
"I think I'll be getting a flu shot this year. The story actually covers a great deal more than the 1918 influenza. The influenza story flashes in and out of the story line, sometimes more, sometimes less. The author recounts the United States' medical community's struggle to be taken seriously at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. He recounts how limits on the press (due to the war), limits on resources (due to the war), crowding of soldiers in cantonments ("), and politics (due to being what politics are) each affected the spread of the disease and perhaps contributed to its severity. He goes into interesting detail about the researches and some of the politicians involved, and does a very nice job describing influenza as a pathogen and how it is related to pneumonia and other infections. I did not realize that 1918 was really just the high point of a severe influenza virus that actually may have started appearing in 1917 and certainly continued in some (perhaps muted) state for the next 3-5 years. It is unfortunate that the number of people affected and killed and some of the other statistics and percentages become almost numbing after a while. Up until reading this I had sort of thought people were really blindsided by this, did not see it come, did not do much beyond black magic to try to protect themselves, but the real story is even more fascinating."
"Since I recently survived a minor bout with influenza, and since there is currently a worldwide pandemic of a highly contagious but relatively weak strain of the H1N1 virus, this book was particularly timely. The central focus of the book is the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed as many as a hundred thousand people around the world - interestingly, it was a particularly deadly form of H1N1 that caused that catastrophe.
There is a lot of preliminary discussion of medical history, diagnosis and treatment methods for various illnesses, and the evolution of medical science leading up to 1918. Then we learn about how the virus likely mutated and started into the human population, and how the world conditions helped spread the virus (end of WWI, lots of soldiers who were "carriers" moving around the world). The descriptions of the epidemic's impact were quite sobering; hard to imagine that kind of "natural" devastation. Much of the book focuses on "the search for the cure" and the people who worked to control the disease, as well as aspects of how the public information was mishandled. I learned a lot about the nature of influenza, its different variants, the avian and swine connections, etc.
The thing that made the 1918 virus so deadly was how it attacked the immune system of its victims. Ironically, for this variant, the book explains how the strongest and healthiest young adults had the most dramatic immune system response to the virus, and hence the highest death rate. Young children and the elderly were barely impacted.
The final portions of the book were interesting, warning about how unprepared we are today, should a condition similar to 1918 return. For example, the vast majority of flu vaccines are produced outside the US; in emergency conditions, it's unlikely that foreign suppliers would be allowed to share their drugs. And since modern medical treatments in general are more effective, actual hospital capacity for a massive epidemic is much smaller than historically. Interesting to consider.
I thought the book would have benefited from more aggressive editing, or even an abridgment. There is just too much detail in places, to many repetitive examples, and too much "filler" language in the writing style. But there is much to learn, and I appreciated the many insights."
"Fascinating book. Many, many times in the book, I stopped and said to myself, "that's interesting, I never knew that". The early history of the practice medicine in this country and lack of training of the doctors was jaw dropping.
During WWI, academic instruction in general suffered due to total commitment to the war effort. "In view of the comparatively short time during which most of the student-soldiers will remain in college and the exacting military duties awaiting them, academic instruction must necessarily be modified along the lines of direct military value."
I appreciated the great detail used in explaining the scientific rigor in trying to understand the disease that was plaguing the country and world. All the dead ends and false leads with persistent desperate scientists trying to find the answers in the midst of horror. "These things become easy to discern in hindsight. But how does one know when to persist, when to continue to try to make an experiment work, when to make adjustments - and when finally to abandon a line of thought as mistaken or incapable of solution with present techniques?
How does one know when to do either?"
With headlines starting to appear again about the danger from the Swine Flu which we might face in the fall, this book should be widely read and attention paid."
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