Rating: 
Summary: Almost Fantastic
Review: This was my first "non-academic" book on the subject--my other reading has all been on demographic analysis of the pandemic. I found the book very readable and learned a lot about the history of modern medicine, the evolution of medical education in the US, and the personalities involved in the scientific and administrative changes that facilitated that change. But I agree with a previous reviewer that the melodrama was completely unnecessary. The author also seems to be building an argument that the conditions for a present-day pandemic are everywhere, but I wasn't convinced. I was also confused by his attempts to link his well-researched topic with current discussions of a bioterrorist threat. He would have done better to leave that tangent alone. But all-in-all, this is an eye-opening and informative piece of work.
Rating:
Summary: Almost Fantastic
Review: This was my first "non-academic" book on the subject--my other reading has all been on demographic analysis of the pandemic. I found the book very readable and learned a lot about the history of modern medicine, the evolution of medical education in the US, and the personalities involved in the scientific and administrative changes that facilitated that change. But I agree with a previous reviewer that the melodrama was completely unnecessary. The author also seems to be building an argument that the conditions for a present-day pandemic are everywhere, but I wasn't convinced. I was also confused by his attempts to link his well-researched topic with current discussions of a bioterrorist threat. He would have done better to leave that tangent alone. But all-in-all, this is an eye-opening and informative piece of work.
Rating: 
Summary: History, Hopefully not a Forecast
Review: Today as I read the newspaper I learned that we had one more GI killed in Iraq. And there was a statement from the CDC that the new Avian Flu statement they made yesterday was too alarming. The new Avian Flu has a mortality rate of 72%, that is 72 people out of a hundred who catch it die.
This book brings back the story of the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed as many as a hundred million people. That's more people killed than the plague, or of World War I and World War II put together. (Some people say only [ONLY] 30 -40 million died.
The book also uses this flu to talk about the changs in medicine brought out by the flu. Indeed this was the foundation of medicine as we know it today.
This is a book that should be on everyone list, along with Laurie Garrett's books on the state of medical systems around the world today.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Truly a magnificent and chilling work. I am layman and I found this book absolutely fascinating. From the very beginning I just thought the interesting intersection of the scientist and the science and the pressures of the era created an absolute spell binding work. My only criticism is that I would have liked to no more about the world around the flu. He does a wonderful job of giving us an understanding of the leadership and the efforts and the drive of the scientist and their agents. However, I would have loved to see more of the vignettes he gives us into the everyday lives of the effected and infected populations. I think those moments provided such color and breadth I wanted more at the end. A wonderful book though, I would recommend it to anyone who has the slightest interest in history or science.
Rating:
Summary: better than any "fiction" novel
Review: very well written. i couldnt stop reading this book. there is not that much info out there on the 1918 epidemic. this is a great book and the best ive read of what is out there. my father lived through the epidemic. i remember asking him about it around 1971 or so when i first heard about it in a history book. he lived on 3rd avenue in new york. he was 10 years old then and he remembers that in the morning there would be dead bodies piled up on the street with a note attached to each building with the names of the dead who died the night before. the ONLY movie ever filmed about the epidemic is a film titled "1918" directed by ken harrison starrring matthew broderick. the only novel i know about the epidemic is PALE HORSE PALE RIDER by KATHERINE ANN PORTER who almost died in it but lived to the ripe old age of 90.why the story of a disease that almost wiped out the human race is so little noted is beyond me.as barry mentions in a later chapter people who do remeber it think of it as a plague not a disease. whats scary is that a new epidemic is way overdo. buy this book. its great.
Rating:
Summary: a sneeze by any other name....
Review: WOW! This book will leave you breathless. It is an amazing chronology of a disease, of medical investigation, and the workings of the US government. Very interesting. I plan to use this as a monograph the next time I teach (college level) post Civil War history.
Rating:
Summary: Just the flu
Review: Wow. The Great Influenza sort of blew me away. Like most people I've heard of the 1918 influenza, but also like most I've never actually read anything on the epidemic. My first introduction to the topic came as a young nurse working on a neurology ward where Parkinson's Disease was diagnosed and treated. At the time it was believed to have arisen as a late neurological response to that infection. For all I know they may still think so. During the swine flu epidemic and the controversy over whether the vaccine had caused a rise in the incidence of Guillian Barre, the so-called French polio, the 1918 flu was frequently mentioned. After reading Mr. Barry's book I can certainly see why.What amazes me most about the pandemic of 1918 is not its virulence so much as its repercussions. It definitely occurred during the most inopportune time, almost proving Murphey's law that if anything can go wrong it will and at the worst possible time. Probably one of the most significant outcomes of the flu seems to have been the effect it had on the peace terms. One is left to wonder if Wilson had not been affected by the flu in so damaging a way and at so crucial a time, whether World War II could have been avoided. Moreover much is made of the nihilism of the 1920s, that lost generation between the two world wars. The young of the era seemed to have gone through a loss of innocence that is often attributed to the effects of the WWI experience and the death of the overconfident 19th century way of life. It seems to me that far more damage to the confidence of young adults was due to the effects of the influenza epidemic. Certainly Barry's discussion makes the character of the 1920s and 1930s much clearer to me. The differential effect of the flu on the various age groups, suggests much about the effect of the virus on the immune system. Having had to manage patients with ARDS in ICU, most of them very young people like those in 1918, I can hardly imagine what it might have been like to be a nurse during a time prior to mechanical ventilation and sophisticated drug therapy. We lose ARDS patients with an unpleasant frequency even now. In 1918 I don't know how one could have helped even a single patient survive it. It had to have been appallingly painful to the staff, overworked as they were, even ill themselves as some were, to watch a patient die that way especially as the author points out again and again because so many of these patients were in the prime of life and had so much to live for yet. I certainly know what its effect has been on me over the years. Although the author attempts to reassure the reader that although we may have another similar pandemic, the outcome will be less devastating because of our modern medical facilities and experience, I can't help but think of the Titanic! It couldn't sink, you know, because it was the product of the most modern and up to date technology of its time. Maybe MRSA (methacillin resistant staph aureus) and VRE (vanco resistant enterococci) will be our armageddon! A serious and fascinating book. One every health care worker should read.
Rating:
Summary: original, intellectually provocative-- and frightening
Review: You don't run across many books like this one. The author asked a very important question: how did society react to a crisis of almost unimaginable proportions-- in the midst of WW I, influenza kills hundreds of thousands of Americans in a few weeks, and tens of millions around the world-- and what lessons does that teach for use today. He then broke that question down and looked at two different sets of people who had at least some power (or responsibility anyway) to handle the situation. In this case that meant the national and local political leadership and a small group of extraordinarily capable scientists who comprise the chief characters in the book, and through whom the story unfolds. Some of those stories are staggering, and frightening. The book also looks deep into the political process, into morality, and into the nature of science itself. I can't think of a book like this one. It's part The Metaphysical Club, part Perfect Storm.
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