Rating: 
Summary: Soggy with statistics, but a reasonable survey
Review: Between Alfred Crosby and Richard Collier, these two men have written the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Subsequent writers like Iezzoni and Kolata heavily use the primary reseach done by both Crosby and Collier.Crosby's work does, to some degree, lack eloquent narrative, but it is a superbly researched book on the pandemic. Crosby sticks to the facts and statistics and has achieved a work that is well written history. I would recommend reading Richard Collier's work in conjunction with this work to get the full impact of the pandemic. Crosby focuses on the pandemic's impact in America while Collier focuses on the more global experience. While Collier may have a better flowing narrative, Crosby includes all of the hard statistics which lends a different, more concrete feeling to the subject matter. Overall, if Crosby's work is the left shoe, Collier's is the right shoe. You can read one without the other, but, why would you want to?
Rating: 
Summary: A great example of what history can be
Review: Between Alfred Crosby and Richard Collier, these two men have written the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Subsequent writers like Iezzoni and Kolata heavily use the primary reseach done by both Crosby and Collier. Crosby's work does, to some degree, lack eloquent narrative, but it is a superbly researched book on the pandemic. Crosby sticks to the facts and statistics and has achieved a work that is well written history. I would recommend reading Richard Collier's work in conjunction with this work to get the full impact of the pandemic. Crosby focuses on the pandemic's impact in America while Collier focuses on the more global experience. While Collier may have a better flowing narrative, Crosby includes all of the hard statistics which lends a different, more concrete feeling to the subject matter. Overall, if Crosby's work is the left shoe, Collier's is the right shoe. You can read one without the other, but, why would you want to?
Rating: 
Summary: The First on the 1918 Pandemic--and still the best...
Review: Crosby's classic study of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic-- while recently supplemented by John M. Barry's excellent new book THE GREAT INFLUENZA and Gina Kolatta's FLU-- remains the Source Authority for all serious students of this devastating killer virus. While researching FINAL EPIDEMIC, my own novel of the re-emergence of the Spanish flu of 1918, Crosby's book was a goldmine of information... and a primary reason why I spent so many sleepless nights during the time I was writing on the subject. Crosby's book is, without doubt, the classic study of the H1N1 killer flu virus and ranks among the best of medical non-fiction narrative around. Frighteningly, killer flu and the possibility of a lethal pandemic is again a timely subject. A startling fact about the original 1918 plague that devastated humanity --notable, since it occurred within the lifespan of many still alive today-- is the collective amnesia that so often surrounds that event.
Few Americans realize that it's extremely probable that they have a family member only a generation or two ago who fell prey to the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic; tales of when the cry "bring out your dead!" echoed along American streets were seldom passed from those who witnessed it to those of us who descended from the survivors. It takes a trip to virtually any cemetery to bring the death toll home to us, as marker after marker identifies the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. Worldwide, deaths in 1918-1919 totalled at least 40 million humans, and very likely as many as 100 million-- all within a timespan measured in months.
As I write this, an avian influenza virus not unlike that which triggered the 1918 pandemic, if forcing the mass slaughter of chickens and other birds throughout Asia. It is an attempt to forestall the very real possibility that the virus (which already has infected human victims through bird-to-human transmission, and currently has a 70 percent mortality rate among human victims) could acquire genes which would allow for human-to-human transmission. During research for FINAL EPIDEMIC, I interviewed dozens of medical researchers and epidemeologists. Without exception, each stated that their greatest fear was a resurgence of a influenza virus similar to the 1918 variant, which through incubation in humans mutated into a unprecedented killer of humanity. Based on the cyclic nature of flu pandemics, I was told, mankind was already overdue-- and, worse: woefully unprepared-- for such an emerging viral Shiva. Influenza was, and remains, a universal threat: As Crosby wrote in "America's Forgotten Pandemic," "I know how not to get AIDS. I don't know how not to get the flu." --Earl Merkel
Author, FINAL EPIDEMIC (PenguinPutnam 2002)
and DIRTY FIRE (PenguinPutnam 2003)
Rating:
Summary: Best book on the Influenza Pandemic available
Review: Excellent historical perspective on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Extensive facts and figures about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic which [in a period of ten months] likely claimed the lives of a 100 million people worldwide.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Reference Book
Review: I spent 2.5 years studying the flu and the havoc it wrought on Philadelphia, and Mr. Crosby's book was always within reach. It is one of the best sources one will find when studying the flu. Some may complain that it lacks a certain depth, agreed. But that's not what Mr. Crosby set out to do. He wanted to document this forgotten period in American History in a book that was both readable and not impossible to finish in under a decade. As far as his sources go, I feel he did a good job. I search the city high and low and came up with maybe a few items that Mr. Crosby did not. Overall, if you want to read a well researched and well written book, buy "America's Forgotten Pandemic."
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Reference Book
Review: I spent 2.5 years studying the flu and the havoc it wrought on Philadelphia, and Mr. Crosby's book was always within reach. It is one of the best sources one will find when studying the flu. Some may complain that it lacks a certain depth, agreed. But that's not what Mr. Crosby set out to do. He wanted to document this forgotten period in American History in a book that was both readable and not impossible to finish in under a decade. As far as his sources go, I feel he did a good job. I search the city high and low and came up with maybe a few items that Mr. Crosby did not. Overall, if you want to read a well researched and well written book, buy "America's Forgotten Pandemic."
Rating:
Summary: Soggy with statistics, but a reasonable survey
Review: I wish this book had been written by more of a drama queen. It's more of an epidemiological survey when I wanted at least a couple horsemen of the apocalypse. I became interested in the influenza pandemic because of Malcolm Gladwell's article, "The Dead Zone" in the September 29, 1997 issue of The New Yorker. I'd hoped this book could flesh out the details, but it was more dry stats than I wanted. Someone looking for a sweeping historical survey of the flu and it's effects won't find it here.
Rating:
Summary: Learn From The Past, Or It's Gonna Happen Again!
Review: I'm a former police officer, college graduate (B.Sci. Psychology), and past candidate for the Kansas House of Representatives. I bought this book prior to 9/11 and was taken back then. It gathered a little dust, but the other day I took it off the shelf and read it again. It reads like a blueprint for our future. I'm not an alarmist, but supposedly that flu thing in 1918 started at Fort Riley, KS (my neck of the woods) so I can speak from the heart... And here's the message: All of you in the health profession and any other protection profession who are reading this review and are considering buying this book should push those buttoms and BUY this book. Everything the "Higher Ups" are teaching you at those seminars and conferences is a bunch of "what ifs." In the life span of our grandfathers--everything in this book happened.
Rating:
Summary: The author states too many statistics
Review: The book was very informative but I felt like I was being quoted statistics more than the authors interpretive research. I felt the author related the scope of the pandemic but not the implications, short term or long term.
Rating:
Summary: What do YOU know about the flu of 1918??
Review: The title of this exceptional book is the understatement of the 20th Century. This was not your average killer flu! The handful of other killer flu's of the century (defined as 20,000+ deaths, a small fraction of the number who died in 1918), the kind with which we're all familiar, look mighty miniscule beside this virus that took its victims in a most painful and violent manner. This pandemic, which killed more soldiers than World War I, seems to have completely escaped the attention of America's under-informed and virus-obsessed media today. So much so that Crosby devotes a chapter to the fact that this major event--which, by the way, has never been fully explained--disappeared from the collective conscience as soon as it was over. Some of this undoubtedly was due to (1) no television, and (2) very little radio due to the war, and (3) the war. Because I assure you, if anything even remotely of this magnitude happened today, there would be absolute mass panic and hysteria: the economy might well come crashing to the ground for good. This mysterious and deadly virus remains unique in several ways, including the weird fact that it mostly attacked and killed people in the prime of their lives (20s and 30s). So devastated was port-city Philadelphia that coffins were stacked in the street. Coffin-makers naturally took advantage and price-gouged to the extent the US government had to intervene (kind of like gas immedately shooting up to $5 a gallon on September 11th in Indianapolis, Indiana). And on and on. There is nothing about this subject or this book that isn't shocking. As for the data, well, that's how good academic research is done, for crying out loud. If the author hadn't included the statistics, everyone would have denounced this as shoddy pseudoscience. Moreover, the startling mortality data are fascinating in their own right. An exceptionally well-written, riveting read.
| 
