Before AIDS or Ebola, there was the Spanish Flu — Catharine Arnold’s gripping narrative, Pandemic 1918, marks the 100th anniversary of an epidemic that altered world history.In January 1918, as World War I raged on, a new and terrifying virus began to spread across the globe. In three successive waves, from 1918 to 1919, influenza killed more than 50 million people. German soldiers termed it … soldiers termed it Blitzkatarrh, British soldiers referred to it as Flanders Grippe, but world-wide, the pandemic gained the notorious title of “Spanish Flu”. Nowhere on earth escaped: the United States recorded 550,000 deaths (five times its total military fatalities in the war) while European deaths totaled over two million.
Amid the war, some governments suppressed news of the outbreak. Even as entire battalions were decimated, with both the Allies and the Germans suffering massive casualties, the details of many servicemen’s deaths were hidden to protect public morale. Meanwhile, civilian families were being struck down in their homes. The City of Philadelphia ran out of gravediggers and coffins, and mass burial trenches had to be excavated with steam shovels. Spanish flu conjured up the specter of the Black Death of 1348 and the great plague of 1665, while the medical profession, shattered after five terrible years of conflict, lacked the resources to contain and defeat this new enemy.
Through primary and archival sources, historian Catharine Arnold gives readers the first truly global account of the terrible epidemic.
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This was a fascinating read! I personally loved the style, where the author had a lot of direct quotes from letters, journals, and interviews. For a non-fiction book, it was very readable. And, since I was reading this as an author to gain information on how to tie the Spanish Flu into the lives of my characters, I found that it fit the bill perfectly.
Apart from being fascinating, it really is gruesome. There wasn’t much lovely about the Spanish Flu, and the author portrayed a very realistic view of life during this era.
From what I recall, there wasn’t any language (maybe one or two words), which I appreciated it.
At times, a few of the examples became redundant as she gave the same information over and over in different chapters. Some of that could have probably been streamlined, but it was so bad that it hindered my reading of it.
This book was incredible. It is estimated 20 million people died in WWI. Just as that terrible debacle was maybe slowing down a new killer rose up to take war’s place. The Spanish flu. Spanish, not because it started there, because Spain was neutral in WWI and didn’t have a news blackout. I have always wondered about that. I have also always wondered how 100 million people could die of the “flu” and people know nothing of it today in the COVID era. My great aunt Katie died in 1918 of the Spanish flu. She was 18 years old. This disease was cruel. Instead of the usual flu taking the old it took young people, in the prime of life. It took others too but it especially liked people in their teens and twenties and very healthy. The brilliance of this book is not the statistics but the voices speaking from that time as they talk again and are heard. They talk of the days leading up to the flu, the parades, and the innocence. They talk of having the disease and how painful it was, they talk of watching their loved ones die from it. They talk of running out of coffins, bodies stacked like wood, mass graves, and the smell. They talked of grief. One little girl told how she loved church bells until they became synonymous with funerals. The book talked about the heroism of the medical people who fought the disease, many of them dying also. I had to stop reading this book sometimes because of the sadness I felt for these people. People are so resilient because life goes on and they got on with it. I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a review.
This is the book people should be reading. Although that pandemic happened over 100 years ago, some things never change. Doctors did not know how to treat the virus because they didn’t know what a virus was. Still, the medical staff was overwhelmed, so many people were ill, lack of hospital beds, etc. Things pertinent today. Leaders are just as reluctant to believe it could have been a reality, just as today. A good read a person can still learn from today.
pandemic, war-is-hell, historical-research, historical-places-events, history-and-culture, historical-figures, horror
This volume presents a more extensive study of the transmission of this deadly opportunistic disease as it used the vector of war and also relates names of those who suffered it still familiar these hundred years later. This presentation also goes into greater detail regarding the rigors suffered by the victims and does examine it all from the British perspective. The publisher’s blurb is quite respectable and ought to be interesting to the general public. I, on the other hand, represent different segments: became an RN in 1968, addicted to history, have read other books and theses on the subject, grandmother had the disease and it left heart damage, uncle had it and was told that Parkinson’s was a late side effect.
The writer reminds that there was no way to visualize a virus or prove animal or avian hosting and mutation at that time, and everyone on each continent was so terrified that even historic remedies were tried.
I requested and received a free ebook review copy from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley.
This book gives one a new perspective on the Covid pandemic. It struck down all in it’s path – not just the vulnerable.
If you want to in now how the pandemic was handled in 1918 this is the book for you. It was so informative. One day people will look back and judge how we handled the Corona virus.
Excellent, informative. Mostly easy to read. Only a few really technical sections.
We are well into our second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the similarities to the 1918 pandemic are stark and scary. This is not a page-turner like a fictional mystery book, but it is worth reading to see how far we have come in a hundred years – and how far we haven’t come.
At the beginning of the book the author states she will primarily be covering and using sources from the English speaking world. USA, Great Britain, India, South Africa. The author does a good job within these parameters. Without doubling the size of the book in order to include the rest of the world, I would have appreciated including some of it. I was especially intrigued by a commonly held view that the disease sprang from the untold numbers of corpses rotting in No Man’s Land on the Western Front of WW1.
GLT
The reader was quite good at characterizing the different voices of those interviewed for the book. When the voice came from a journal or other writing, he did the same. The theme of this book is so appropriate for our current times. This is what we have yet to see from COVID-19.
It is difficult subject matter but it is well written although a sad depiction of actual events.