Flu: A Social History of Influenza (Hardcover)

by Tom Quinn (Author)
Key Phrases: historic immunity, epidemic catarrh, human flu, Hong Kong, United States, United Kingdom (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This fascinating book explores the havoc caused by the world's most deadly virus - and the destruction left behind in its wake.

About the Author
A journalist by profession, Tom Quinn has written books on many subjects; recent publications include Eccentric London, Hidden Britain, Country Houses of Britain & Ireland and Britain's Greatest Scandals (all New Holland). He is currently researching a book on the history of contraception. Tom also writes occasional obituaries for The London Times, and is the editor of Country Landowner magazine. He lives in London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd. (November 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845379411
• ISBN-13: 978-1845379414
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #422,542 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars an inch deep and a mile wide, January 31, 2009

By	doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Hoping for a social history of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, I picked up Quinn's _Flu: a social history of influenza_. What I got instead was a broad (and somewhat shallow) history of the disease itself from ancient times to the present. While I can't claim the title was misleading, I was disappointed given my expectations.

Even now properly diagnosing disease can be an uncertain proposition. Attempting to diagnose diseases that struck hundreds (even thousands) of years ago is even more problematic - yet this does not discourage Quinn from postulating that various epidemics from the 15th century forwards were the flu. There are a number of problems with this, the first (and greatest) are the variety of symptoms described: three different physicians may describe several different symptoms of the same disease - or, perhaps - they are different diseases (as one sickness weakens the body to become susceptible to others).

As a social history, Quinn also leaves something to be desired. Certainly medicine has made some remakable strides in the last 500 years, and may treatments to disease were as potentially lethal as the illness itself - this is hardly new. Yet this sort of retelling treatment horror stories is the bulk of his social history - very little about how disease effected population migration, wages and standards of living, gender realations or power-dynamics is addressed.

My greatest disappointment, however, was in his all-too-brief discussion of the 1918 - 1919 Pandemic. Nothing new was presented here, Quinn instead summarizing and re-telling what others have written on the epidemic: its causes, its spread, its lethality.

For those interested in epidemiology for the lay-person, I strongly recommend The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History which not only explains the biology of viruses in an accessable manner, but whose discussion of the pandemic is much more detailed and rich. Another masterpiece on the pandemic (and the book that began my interest on the subject) is Alfred Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 This book pales in comparison.