Bryn Barnard

A wonderfully fascinating, if too short, look at several of the major plagues that shaped the world we live in. From the Black Death that created a middle class from the ashes of the old feudal order to how Europeans conquered the New World, only with the aid of their valuable "ally" Smallpox to the Spanish Flu that influenced the peace at the end of World War I, thereby setting the stage for World War II. Any of those morons who don't vaccinate their kids, should be forced to read this book show more and others like it. Do they really want to go back to the world of less than a century ago? What would the sufferers of Typhus or Yellow Fever say to these morons? Which world would "they" rather live in? The road to the mostly disease-free society we live in is paved with the skulls of plague victims and lined with tombstones. show less

A wonderfully fascinating, if too short, look at several of the major plagues that shaped the world we live in. From the Black Death that created a middle class from the ashes of the old feudal order to how Europeans conquered the New World, only with the aid of their valuable "ally" Smallpox to the Spanish Flu that influenced the peace at the end of World War I, thereby setting the stage for World War II. Any of those morons who don't vaccinate their kids, should be forced to read this book show more and others like it. Do they really want to go back to the world of less than a century ago? What would the sufferers of Typhus or Yellow Fever say to these morons? Which world would "they" rather live in? The road to the mostly disease-free society we live in is paved with the skulls of plague victims and lined with tombstones. show less

A wonderfully fascinating, if too short, look at several of the major plagues that shaped the world we live in. From the Black Death that created a middle class from the ashes of the old feudal order to how Europeans conquered the New World, only with the aid of their valuable "ally" Smallpox to the Spanish Flu that influenced the peace at the end of World War I, thereby setting the stage for World War II. Any of those morons who don't vaccinate their kids, should be forced to read this book show more and others like it. Do they really want to go back to the world of less than a century ago? What would the sufferers of Typhus or Yellow Fever say to these morons? Which world would "they" rather live in? The road to the mostly disease-free society we live in is paved with the skulls of plague victims and lined with tombstones. show less

This is a great book that I found at the library book sale where I'm sure they were going to get rid of it one way or another to try and forget about the just--starting pandemic. It may have been written for "young readers", but I found it fascinating. The illustrations are wonderful, the kind I remember from old picture books of my childhood, filled with informative text material that is probably unknown, even to medical doctors, unless their specialty is epidemiology. I picked it up show more because I was curious and didn't have time to leisurely read it on the spot.
I have read Daniel DeFoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" and have always found it interesting that these sweeping contagious illnesses can change the course of history in many ways outside of the mayhem and death that ensue. For example, Barnard explains how Cholera cleaned up cities and Yellow Fever impacted the slave trade. This book definitely has well-researched material for thought, and I would recommend it to any adult, "young reader", or precocious grade schooler with a love of history and interest in medicine. show less