Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating story.
Review: A fascinating and worthy book. The flu outbreak of 1918 was the deadliest disease outbreak of all time. During a period of less than two months, between 20 and 50 million people perished worldwide. Gina Kolata does an excellent job of reconstructing the outbreak itself from the perspective of eyewitness and newspaper reports from the time, and brings the story into the modern age as she goes into the laboratories of molecular biologists and viriologists who are involved cracking the genetic secrets of flu viruses today. She chronicals the exploits of teams of scientists who traveled to Alaska and Norway to exhume bodies buried during the 1918 pandemic. Researchers hoped to find bodies which had remained frozen since burial due to the deep permafrost that permeats those areas. Scientists also had a few tissue samples which were stored at the Army's pathology warehouse outside of Washington. There, samples of lung tissue from 1918 flu victims had sat for 80 years soaked in formaldahyde and encased in parafin wax.
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Summary: Fascinating, Riveting Cautionary Story About The Flu of 1918
Review: I happened upon this intriguing well-written book after finishing Laurie Garrett's wonderful exploration of the emerging microbiological threat in "The Coming Plague", and was fascinated by what I discovered in this book regarding the specifics of the most famous flu outbreak in modern times, the great world-wide flu epidemic of 1918. Nothing in recent experience, not even the AIDS epidemic, has prepared the American people for the awe-inspiring possibilities that such a rapid and devastatingly virulent flu outbreak could present to us in the new millennium, and the author details the terrifying consequences of the outbreak of influenza in the months after the end of World War One that left over forty million people and traumatized the nation.Indeed, according to author Gina Bari Kolata, the flu of 1918 was the single most dangerous flu epidemic of the 20th century, a plague so virulent it literally boggles the imagination of anyone more familiar with the yearly onset of Asian influenzas, which we may consider to be annoying, off-putting, and sometimes reason for hospitalization, but hardly the stuff of widespread death and disability. Yet in a single year it struck down more people world-wide than any known before it or since, and scientists now believe it had an usually provocative combination of natural properties in terms of its DNA that made it uniquely dangerous in terms of its threat to human beings. Yet, in spite of its historical dimensions, relatively little is known about it, and it is a little discussed and curiously mysterious area of modern history. It is only within the recent past that a dedicated team of biological scientists have been able to attempt to unlock the secrets associated with this influenza breakout by researching the influenza's DNA sequences and associated biological properties using tissue samples recovered from victims and preserved over the decades since. The author describes this attempt to uncover the truth about the 1918 flu epidemic in terms of a riveting detective story, at the same time masterfully weaving the details of the pathology of the disease itself and the devastating impact of the killer epidemic into the narrative. Included here is an absorbing and personalizing discussion of the social, economic and cultural effects of the epidemic, told in a compassionate and quite humane fashion, and it composes a disheartening look at the facts surrounding the way the influenza struck otherwise healthy twenty to forty year old citizens with such devastating results. People getting on the New York City subway at one end feeling slightly under the weather actually transpired on board before being able to reach their chosen destinations. What is truly frightening about this well-told cautionary tale is that both the author as well as public health officials warn that another such appearance of a similarly virulent pandemic flu outbreak is not only possible but is in fact probable. Such an outbreak could appear, literally without warning, in any given year. Moreover, the resources needed to successfully combat another such influenza outbreak are not immediately available. Indeed, without a massive change in public policy and a quite rapid public health effort to develop the capability to isolate initial victims as well as to innoculate the population at large with a hastily conjured vaccine, the disastrous history of the 1918 epidemic could well be repeated with horrific results in our lifetime.
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Summary: A science book--not a history book-- for English majors
Review: I thought this book was fascinating. Kolata never claimed that this was the definitive book on the flu in 1918, and mentioned Crosby all over the place. That's fine by me. The description of 1918 was so depressing I couldn't have kept reading it for much longer. What this book really is though is a history of 20th century science and politics. What resources did scientists have in the 1920s? The 1950s? Today? What does it mean for us? I stayed up late to finish this book, and admit that the ending left me aware of all that's unresolved. Maybe in a few years there would have been more info. Still, I enjoyed it very much. Others here have complained about excessive characterization of specific scientists, but to me that was the most compelling part. I want everything I read to help me think about how to live my life. I found the depictions of both courageous and cowardly bureaucrats, curious and smug scientists to be fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Catchy title not related to book content.
Review: Not only were the survivors of the 1918 flu epidemic so traumatized that few would talk about it, apparently so was the author, Gina Kolata. This is an extremely well written book but other than the first chapter, it is not about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. I would look elsewhere for information on that subject.
Rating: 
Summary: NOT about the 1918 epidemic
Review: I wanted to read the story of the 1918 flu--surprise! There is hardly anything about it in this book. Most of the book is about the virus hunters. Sort of interesting but I wanted to learn more about the actual epidemic which took several wonderful family members.
Rating: 
Summary: It'll be back...someday
Review: We are fortunate to live in an age when the threat of deadly, contagious disease is so rare that many of us outside the gay community (thanks to HIV/AIDS in the 80s) cannot fathom the fear that a pandemic generates. The Spanish Influenza of 1918 is the last time the United States faced such an episode and, as such, is worthy of a good, solid historical treatment. You won't get that from this book. Ms. Kolata has been pilloried by many reviewers here for not fleshing out the handful of stories she uses to illustrate the 1918 pandemic. It's a journalistic technique that, used properly, can evoke to the emotional experience of what took place so long ago. I agree that Kolata gives less than a satisfying account of the pandemic. She does, however, tout Crosby's work at several points and I'm willing to accept that as a gesture of good faith -- she may have known that the more history-minded readers would feel left in the lurch when she shifted her narrative focus to the present. Dismissing Kolata for providing an insufficient account from an epidemiological or microbiological standpoint is a fool's game. You don't learn those disciplines through a book aimed at a mass market audience. You learn them through enrolling in a university and studying them sufficiently to earn a degree. Or, if you don't want to spend that much time and money, you look elsewhere here on Amazon.com for a textbook in the subject and you buy that and read it. Spare the rest of us your gripes that Kolata wasn't sufficiently detailed enough in her explanations of the science involved in hunting down the influenza virus and replicating the 1918 strain. She provided enough that my attention was beginning to wander at points. Authors and publishers of books aimed at mass audiences tend to avoid provoking boredom in the reader. It cuts down on sales. What should not be overlooked about this book is its account of how politics -- both within the academy and outside in the "real" world -- shapes scientific exploration. Kolata does an outstanding job of laying out the deleterious effects the former often has on the latter. Anyone who has watched the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress dismantle the Office of Technology Assessment or read about the Baltimore scandal should have serious doubts that the existing federally-funded science research community could respond to another devastating pandemic in a timely and informed manner. I'm not the biggest fan of Gina Kolata's work in the New York Times because it is often shallow and ideologically driven. But I'll stand up for her on this one. She hasn't written the definitive account of the 1918 pandemic. But she has documented a disaster brewing in our nation's science community and this book could well come to be seen as prophetic.
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Summary: Not what I expected
Review: When I first heard about this book, I assumed that it was a fairly straightforward retelling of the story of the 1918 flu pandemic, so I ordered it. I was surprised, upon reading it, to discover that only a very small part of the book discussed the 1918 outbreak; the majority of it concerned the scientific search for the cause of the killer virus. It is a fascinating tale, even if it's not the reason I purchased the book. Occasionally, the scientific language caused my eyes to glaze over, but I still found it interesting. My older daughter, a science grad from MIT who is doing Phd work in neurobiology at Harvard, told me she wants to read this book. I think she'll understand a lot more of it than I did!
Rating:
Summary: Good writing about a killer plague!
Review: My introduction to the wonderful world of viruses came first hand. I am deaf probably due to rubella and/or mumps, and my great-grandmother died in 1918 during the time period in question for the 1918 influenza epidemic. However, since she had been placed in an asylum/poorhouse because she was a grand mal epileptic, her death certificate didn't mention the flu...but the family has always wondered. Kolata does a reasonably good job with an area of expertise which can often be confusing and the usual assortment of suspects who write about virology manage to do it in such a manner as to turn people off of such a scientific morass. Kolata makes her topic interesting and understandable and brings the reader up to date on current ideas and theories concerning what set the world up for being hit by such a devastating disease. She may not have the training in virology, but the author does a good job in presenting her information. I would have like more personal stories included in this book but on the whole I thought the book was well-written. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh, klsst23@pitt.edu
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Summary: Reasonably Good Narrative of a Dreadful Epidemic
Review: I was drawn to this book by a detail mentioned in passing in a review about baseball players playing games all wearing masks during September 1918 because of the pandemic. Alas I did not see much development of this particular detail. I found the narrative was initially interesting but towards the end my interest waned as we read of various scientific squabbles re discovering the source of the epidemic.
Rating:
Summary: Very well written, like a detective story, but unfinished!
Review: Until almost the very end of this book, I would have given it 5 stars. It's so well written, and tells such a fascinating story. I had heard of the 1918 epidemic, as I had a great-uncle who got the flu and later got related Parkinson's Disease and died from that, but I had no idea how terrible it was, and how much it seemed to have been forgotten or pushed out of people's minds. The incredible story of the search for the virus responsible was so well done, and I loved learning about the personalities behind the hunt. However, the book seemed to end extremely suddenly, with quite a few breakthroughs set up to be answered, and us being told the answers were just about to be found, but then we are never told the results. It's as if you were watching a TV news show and they said as they always do "after the break, the incredible ending to the story" and then they never came back from break! I know stories like this really never do end, but in this case it's very specific quests that we are told are about to be revealed, and then the book ends! It almost seemed like it was rushed out, perhaps before the author intended either, to hit the market at a certain time. However, it's still definately worth a read.
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