Book recommendation: The Great Influenza.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post
Last year, while killing time in the Miami airport, I randomly grabbed a book off the shelf of a convenience shop and bought it, along with a bottle of water. The book? The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry.
Though the book was anything but light reading, I wound up learning a lot about the 1918 flu pandemic, the birth of modern medicine, and how vulnerable the world is to a repeat performance of an avian-based flu like the Spanish flu of 1918.
In light of the slow but steady interest in the avian flu spreading in Asia and the real possibility of it to spread to the rest of the world, I would highly recommend reading this book. I may dust it off and re-read it again myself.
I do find the reviews on Amazon to be interesting in that one reviewer states that his reaction to the book includes a renewed interest in getting the flu vaccine. On the contrary, I took the opposite stance. The flu vaccine offered up every year is of little use until the particular strain can be identified and worked with - that's what I took from the book.
Don't rush out and get a vaccine, but do rush out and get this book. It starts slowly, but picks up the pace and is a riveting read.
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UPDATE: Regarding the possibility of another flu pandemic, check out the following blogs/blog posts (and their comments) for more information.I'd appreciate links to any other blogs or blog posts on this subject. You can leave them in the comments section. I'm building my own "library" on this subject, if you will, so please: leave links and comments.
Labels: books
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 10/05/2005 02:37:00 PM
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4 Comments:
After reading your post I saw this:
The 1918 flu virus is resurrected.
YGG.
Peace.
By 
Ronald Rutherford, at
6/10/05 15:58
Julie,
Thanks for the reciprocal link and for the original post. I plan on reading the book based on your recommendation.
But best of all, I really like the review image! That's cool.
By Jim, at
7/10/05 06:54
More links:
BBC
Bird Flu.
Hat tip to:
Democratic Peace
The links I post here do not show up very well. Is there something I am doing wrong?
By Ronald Rutherford, at
7/10/05 17:18
Quarantine call after Romania detects first bird flu cases
By Ronald Rutherford, at
7/10/05 19:09
