Customer Reviews

Flu

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

First off, this book is some things and is not some things. It is very informative and was well researched, there are lots of footnotes at the end. Much of the chapters read as separate articles that could stand independently. What it is not is a novel like read similar to the story that appears in Hot Zone.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning about the 1918 flu and about the modern researchers trying to find clues to what made that flu so deadly. If you are interested in knowing about that topic then I give this book a strong recommendation. If you are looking for a novel type page turner you'll probably be disappointed.

There was one situation that made the whole work worth reading to me, maybe because I have a weird sense of humor. That was the telling of two separate research expeditions into the frozen north to dig up bodies of people that had died of the 1918 flu. One team was filled with experts, used x-ray to search, spent years planning, spent tons of money, had tons of media present. Didn't get results, the bodies were too decomposed.

The other expedition was one guy with a pick. Well actually he got a few villagers to help him dig, but he spent only a few thousand of his own money and got results, real helpful results, in a couple of weeks.

I also found the detailing of a flu scare that happened in Hong Kong with a jump from chickens to humans a very interesting story. How that scare and the research that went into studying it and comparing that to the 1918 ordeal was fascinating.

There is a bit of information here about the politics of the Swine Flu panic in the 1970's and how the Ford administration dealt with it. Some of the same kinds of questions and issues are relevant today with all the threats of toxic warfare.

If you find the topic of the 1918 flu interesting and how it relates to modern day problems and solutions this book is a strong recommendation.

In one year, 1918, The Great Flu Epidemic killed more people than any other single event in world history to date; an estimated 40 million people lost their lives. And they were primarily young and healthy. In the early 20th Century, people who survived the diseases of childhood were relatively robust. Yet they were the primary victims of this plague. So many young parents died in Boston that the Italian Home for Children was created to handle the orphans of Italian immigrant families who had settled there. Interestingly, the first signs of the epidemic were in Boston and nearby Fort Devens, where returning troops may have brought the disease.

This was a world epidemic that spread even from Patagonia to the Arctic. We often read about the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, where almost a third of the populatiion in parts of Europe perished. But we hear very little on the Influenza Epidemic (only that it killed more people than WWI) and not much more.

The most fascinating part of the book deals with an astonishing effort to try to resurrect the genes of the 1918 flu from preserved lung tissue of a flu victim that had been stored in a vast government warehouse. The scientists were attempting to piece together the relationship of the 1918 virus (this must be the finest example of a viral archeological sample) to the 1997 Hong Kong Flu. The HK 1997 flu shared some scary similarities to the 1918 flu symptoms--young, healthy people were dying, their lungs suddenly filling up with pneumonia-like fluids. This leads to the question if the 1918 epidemic could happen again?

Gina Bari Kolata is an esteemed science reported for the New York Times and has been almost obsessed by the mystery of this epidemic. She is well qualified to write such a medical/scientific mystery.

I found this book to be disappointing.

Given the rich material at the heart of the flu story (molecular biology, genetics, virology) I had hoped that this science would, albeit at a layman's level, be the center of the story. Instead the book is largely a collection of anecdotes about a subset of those who tried to reconstruct the virus. Such material could better have been dealt with, more briefly, in (for example) a New Yorker magazine article.

One exception - the last 10 pages describe some of the scientist's insights into how this virus might have become so lethal. The too-brief discussion of these theories provides the reader with some food for thought. It is ashame that the author included so little material of this type.

Summary - if your interest is with the people involved in this detective work, this book is worth a read. If your interest is in the underlying science this book will likely disappoint you.

In this book she covers what seems the entire history of influenza, which includes the greatest pandemic in history in 1918-1919, the swine flu scare in 1976-- she even goes into litigation over the vaccine-- attempts to dig up bodies killed by the 1918 virus and sequence its genome, none of it in depth. In all of the footnotes for this book, there is not a single one for a primary source regarding the pandemic itself. No diaries, no lab notes, no original letters. There's hardly a reference to a contemporary newspaper. In fact, her notes cite interviews with a historian who wrote about the pandemic. Gina Kolata is a reporter, and this is a glorified newspaper story, expanded. Too bad. The subject itself is of interest.

I was extremely disappointed in this book. For 2 years I have been gathering data from primary sources here in my county on the 1918 Epidemic and it's effects on our local history. I'm usually thrilled to find anything written on this subject. Ms. Kolata gets barely a passing grade for the first 4 1/2 chapters. Then she departs into a long rambling tale of the swine flu vaccine fiasco of the middle 1970's. None of which has anything to do with the mystery and mayhem of the 1918 pandemic. Several pages are consumed with biographical info on Dr.Hultin, while interesting it belongs elsewhere. Of the dozens of gifted men and women who have tackled this subject why focus on one or two for personal biographies? The author never seriously explores one of the burning questions, how did the virus travel around the world and arise everywhere at almost the same exact time? For the layperson (that would be me!)I believe it is more important to explore that question rather than to know exactly how to slice a tissue sample. If you read this book for the information on "the search for the virus that caused it", you will probably be satisfied. If you are looking to it for a history of what the pandemic was like and how it meshed with the world of 1918, you will no doubt be disappointed. In short, if you have never heard of the 1918 flu epidemic then you may be satisfied with this book. However if you have even a cursory knowledge of the subject you will probably wish like I do that you had spent your money on something else.

if you're interested in the 1918 epidemic, read Afred Crosby's book, not this one. If you're interested in current efforts of scientists who pulled the old virus off an old pathology side and sequenced the genome, this is pretty good.

I've gotten pretty interested in this subject, and have read several books on the pandemic. John Barry's "The Great Influenza" is by far the best, a wonderfully written and driving narrative that also provides an enormous amount of important context that is woven into the story-- everything from the founding of Johns Hopkins Medical School and Wilson's presidency to an understanding of the interplay between the virus and the immune system. This also tells us much about what might happen right now, as we face the threat of a new pandemic. Crosby's book is excellent but a distinct second to Barry's, unless you're looking for tables of statistics, which barry doesn't have. This book, Gina Kolata's, is superficial tripe. Like a few other reviewers here, I think it reads like a newspaper story about the now-dated effort to extract the virus from frozen bodies, and tells you little or nothing about events in 1918 itself. If you wnat to read about trying to resurrect the virus a few years ago, neither Barry nor Crosby mention it. If you want to read about 1918, or learn about the science, get Barry's book. If you want statistics, get Crosby's.

I was so disappointed by this book that I'm actually writing a review here! This book feels like it was written in great haste. Kolata fails to find or depict compelling conflicts, personalities or science... and her writing comes close to being excruciating! For a great piece of recent science writing check out the _Baltimore Case_ instead.

"Flu" needs some serious editing, beginning with Kolata's annoying repetition of words and phrases. I lost count of the number of times "haunt", "haunted" or "hauntingly" is used (Kolata has a penchant for the pathetic). "He spends his spare time with his wife and young children ..." she writes in one sentence, only to begin the very next sentence with "In his spare time, he composes music ..." Just what does he (virologist Tautenberger) do in his spare time - compose music with his family? Is it relevant anyway? More significantly, Kolata's discussion of the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 influenza is muddied and contradictory. In her concluding chapter she states categorically, and with no further explanation, "There is no reason to believe that pigs gave it to humans ..." Later in the same chapter one reads, "... the 1918 flu resembled a bird flu but it could not have come directly from a bird - it had to have been adapted and modified first by growing in humans or pigs." For a more enlightening discussion of this theme see the brief chapter on influenza in Prof. Michael Oldstone's "Viruses, Plagues, & History", where the concept of "antigenic shift" is introduced. "Flu" is short on history and shorter still on science. The writing is sloppy and sophomoric. Nonetheless, Kolata's portraits of some of the researchers studying influenza are interesting, and far worse books on the disease have been written ("The Plague of the Spanish Lady" comes to mind).

For those familiar with the intricacies of the 1918 flu, this book may not be one to keep on the bookshelves. However, for those (such as myself) who know about this pandemic only peripherally, it was an entertaining and engaging introduction to the devastation of the 1918 influenza epidemic. But most intriguingly, this book places the 1918-19 pandemic into the current world view of disease and how we can and should respond to it. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I appreciated very much reading about the swine flu vaccination fiasco and the subsequent "bird-flu" interventions. What this book has done for me is ignited my interest in studying it further (is there any greater compliment?) and introduced me to some of the scientists investigating the pandemic currently (though I do agree with a previous reviewer that the depiction of Dr. Duncan was a bit inappropriate). But most importantly, the pandemic is interpreted in the science and medicine of today, with an eye on the future. I would heartily recommend this book to people interested in medicine, immunology, or virology....especially if they, like I, have not been introduced to this topic in their schooling. And now I am going to order the Crosby book!