Customer Reviews

The Plague of the Spanish Lady: The Influenza Panademic of 1918-1919

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Collier's work is one of the finest examples of what good historical narrative can be. He uses historical information to write history in an engaging and interesting manner. Collier's work is one of the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. Critics of this book will probably say the same things critics of Herodotus said. Collier does lack statistics, numbers and charts that people have come to associate with history, but makes up for it in his narrative.

This is a superb companion to Alfred Crosby's work on the Influenza Pandemic. Collier's focus is more global and excludes the American experience while Crosby focuses almost solely on the American experience. Collier writes in the style of Herodotus while Crosby's leanings are more to a Thucydidian style of writing. One of the two books is bound to appeal to almost everybody. Reading both books, though, gives one a more comprehensive view of the event.

If academic history is not to your taste, read Iezzoni or Kolata's work on the subject. They borrow heavily from Collier and Crosby, but write with a more public audience in mind.

this is a book that both benefits and suffers from extensive research. It is entirely undigested and frequently wrong on the facts. While the writing is good during the telling of each anecdote, the failure to develop any characters or for that matter a plot quickly makes reading tedious. A shame, because there is a lot of first-rate raw material here. The author just doesn't evaluate it critically, or tie any of it together.