Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

In August of 1918, the flu returned after its summer hiatus. However, something had seriously gone wrong after the mild flu of the preceding winter. Soldiers, and other young, healthy people started dying of a terrible pneumonia. The leading doctors of the era slaved to find a cure, but the disease seemed resistant to every step they took. Finally, after having carried away some 100 million people(!), the disease simply disappeared.

This book tells the tale of that last great pandemic, and the subsequent search to identify the virus, to see to it that the disease never returns. Among the biggest events that it covers are the plague year of 1918, the Swine Flu fiasco of 1976, and the 1997 race to stop the spread of a deadly avian flu that was spreading in Hong Kong.

I found this book to be nothing short of gripping! I had read several references to the 1918 flu, but have never really understood the matter. Indeed, the author's treatment of the 1976 Swine Flu and 1997 Hong Kong chicken flu (both of which I do remember) made a number of things suddenly come quite clear.

I deeply enjoyed reading this book, and give it my highest recommendation. If you want to read a gripping whodunit, or a medical-type history book, or want to under current events pertaining to diseases, then I strongly suggest that you read this book!

Deceptively titled (12/13 people found this helpful)

FLU: THE STORY OF THE GREAT INFLUENZA PANDEMIC OF 1918 AND THE SEARCH FOR THE VIRUS THAT CAUSED IT starts out impressively with a chapter on the influenza pandemic of 1918, which globally caused the caused the deaths of at least 20-40 million people (and perhaps up to 100 million), followed by a chapter on the history of disease pandemics and death in history. I thought, wow, this could be another riveting book like 1994's HOT ZONE, which was inspired by the Ebola virus. However, in its middle chapters, FLU drifted off course to a discussion of other flu scares of the late 20th century, specifically the Swine Flu fiasco of 1976 and the Hong Kong Flu panic of 1977. In retrospect, neither was relevant to the deadly 1918 virus except to illustrate the epidemiologists' fixation with influenza as a potentially catastrophic killer. Thus, the book should perhaps have been titled FLU: THE BOGEY MAN UNDERNEATH EPIDEMIOLOGISTS' BEDS. Moreover, though author Gina Kolata did return to the "search for" subtheme, even that fizzled by the end. The hunt for the 1918 virus, and a delineation of what made it so uniquely vicious, remains a story whose ending remains to be written. The HIV virus has replaced the influenza virus as the focus of the scientific community's investigative efforts.

There was one aspect of FLU that I did find notable, and that was a hint of gender bias on the part of the author towards the book's three principal "heroes": Dr. Johan Hultin, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, and Dr. Kirsty Duncan. All three attempted to recover the 1918 virus from the lung tissue of victims that died from the disease. Hultin, a San Francisco pathologist, went looking for corpses of Eskimos buried in the Alaskan permafrost. Duncan, a geographer by profession, organized the exhumation of dead miners buried at Spitzbergen, Norway. Taubenberger, an MD/PhD researcher with the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, went rummaging among tissue samples preserved in paraffin blocks stored for decades at the institute. Kolata admiringly described the professional pedigrees and accomplishments of both Hultin and Taubenberger, but virtually ignored Duncan, except to infer that her "long hair and doe eyes and raw emotions" may have had an unsettling effect on the marriage of one of her team members. Oh, and that Duncan's own marriage broke up. (Was this relevant? Who cares?) Moreover, images of Hultin and Taubenberger hard at work are featured in the volume's too paltry section of photographs, but not Duncan. And, in the "Acknowledgements", the author thanks Hultin and Taubenberger for their "extraordinary assistance", but no gratitude, however lukewarm, is awarded Duncan. Do I perceive some cattiness here? Meow!

I found FLU marginally interesting, but it in no way met expectations. I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're obsessed with the subject matter.

Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

Gina Kolata

Reader Reviews:

Absolutely gripping (6/7 people found this helpful)

Deceptively titled (12/13 people found this helpful)

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