Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Gina Kolata (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0743203984 | Publication Date: January 9, 2001 | Edition: 1

A scientific history of the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918, which killed at least 40 million people. The author details the science and latest understanding of flu, examines the chances of a great epidemic recurring and explores what can be done to prevent it.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Feeling tired, achy, and congested? You'll hope not after reading science writer Gina Kolata's engrossing Flu, a fascinating look at the 1918 epidemic that wiped out around 40 million people in less than a year and afflicted more than one of every four Americans. This tragedy, just on the heels of World War I and far more deadly, so traumatized the survivors that few would talk about it afterward. Kolata reports on the scientific investigation of this bizarre outbreak, in particular the attempts to sequence the virus' DNA from tissue samples of victims. She also looks at the social and personal effects of the disease, from improved public health awareness to the loss of productivity. (The disease affected 20- to 40-year-olds disproportionately.)

How could this disease, now almost trivial to healthy young people, have become so virulent? The answer is complex, invoking epidemiology, immunology, and even psychology, but Kolata cuts a swath through medical papers and statistical reports to tell a story of an out-of-control virus exploiting an exhausted world on the brink of transition into modern society. Through letters, interviews, and news reports, she pieces together a cautionary tale that captures the horror of a devastating illness. Research marches onward, but we're still at the mercy of something as simple as the flu. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"It was a plague so deadly that if a similar virus were to strike today, it would kill more people in a single year than heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS and Alzheimer's disease combined." Between 20 million and 100 million people worldwide died in the 1918 flu pandemic, but for years afterward this deadliest plague in history was almost completely forgotten. Histories and even medical texts rarely mentioned it. This disconnect between the flu's devastation and its obscurity is the starting point for Kolata's incisive history. She explains how the plague spread, covers the various speculations about its causes and origins and gives an account of the search to retrieve a specimen of the virus strain once genetic science had advanced enough to unravel the virus's mysteries. Tissue samplesAfrom an obese woman buried in the permafrost of Alaska and from two soldiers who died in army campsApreserved by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in thumb-sized bits of paraffin prove to be the last remaining sources of the 1918 strain. Kolata, a science writer for the New York Times and author of Clone, profiles the scientists who tracked down these samples, follows their investigations and explains their conclusions. Could such a deadly flu appear again? Many scientists fear it could, hence their quick response to the 1997 outbreak of chicken flu in Hong Kong, which led to the slaughter of 1.2 million birds and, Kolata argues, averted another worldwide disaster. Clearly explaining both the science and the social toll of the pandemic, Kolata writes an admirable history and soberly spells out how the U.S. government is preparedAor unpreparedAfor a similar public health threat today. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1 edition (January 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743203984
• ASIN: B0001OOU7E
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (140 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative read and a couple of adventure stories too, January 17, 2003

By 

Michael Bird (Yorba Linda, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It (Paperback)

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.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could the 1918 Influenza Epidemic happen again?, March 7, 2001

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It (Paperback)

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.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but shallow., January 2, 2000

By 

J. Barcelo (Paterson, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (Hardcover)

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.