The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

The Greatest Killer in History

Humankind likes to think it is in control and rests comfortable in that thought. When something unknown and uncontrollable strikes, panic ensues. Just that happened when influenza struck the world in 1918, a world already weary of the first total world war, a war that led to a near suspension of democracy in the United States as Woodrow Wilson and his administration prepared to enter the conflict. John Barry not only tells the story of a disease raging rampant across the U.S. and the entire world but how humankind’s own deadly squabbling and compulsion to control, restrict, and distort information contributed to worldwide panic and, probably, millions of unnecessary deaths. His is at once a tale of show more terror, inspiration, and caution. It’s one that readers should pay particular heed to in light of the demoralizing beating truth and honesty are taking today in American society.

To truly appreciate the 1918 influenza, readers need an understanding of biology, chemistry, public health practices, medical practices, and the political and social milieu of the period. While a lot to ask, what makes Barry’s history so brilliant is how he weaves all these disciplines into the story to the point where you acquire a basic working knowledge of virology and bacteriology, in addition to a greater appreciation of modern medical science.

Barry begins with the state of medical practice and education and scientific research a century before the great influenza attack. Indeed, what a sorry state it was with no standards in sight. Over time, though, and with great skill and insight, dedicated, curious, and exacting people wrought the kind of modern medical world familiar to us today. It arrived just in time to face off with the influenza plague. What will strike you in particular is just how small the research community was, concentrated in a few institutions in the U.S., especially Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) and a few men and a woman, among them William Welch, Simon Flexner, Oswald Avery, William Park, Anna Williams, and a handful of others. Little known today, except to those involved in medicine and research, you learn just what giants they were and how they contributed a modern life we take for granted today.

You can’t fathom influenza without understanding something of virology and bacteriology. Barry does an excellent job of explaining and illustrating how viruses and bacteria work and how researchers isolate these organisms and devise methods for combatting them. Concomitant with this knowledge is an understanding of public health policy and techniques, which Barry threads throughout the story.

In many ways, the early part of the 20th century proved a perfect breeding ground and killing field for influenza as the Great War caused great concentrations of soldiers in camps, ports, ships, and battlefields in less than healthful conditions. As readers will learn, the times accounted for an accelerated dissemination of the influenza virus and its mutations. What also contributed to the disease, especially its capacity to strike raw terror into the hearts of people so overpowering and crippling that sister would not help sister or brother brother, is that the American government, from Washington straight down to local districts, lied to the American people about the severity and cause of the health crisis, and enlisted the media of the day to participate, all in the name of patriotism and the drive to focus and marshal resources on entering and fighting the Great War. In other words, something we find ourselves confronted with again, manipulation of our free press. Along with from 50 to 100 million deaths, two other casualties of the Great Influenza were Truth and Trust.

If you have never read this book, there’s never been a better or more important to change that. Needless to say, highly recommended. show less

It's rare that I bounce off a book so hard that I don't finish the first chapter, and even rarer that I then write up something about it. But while alarm bells were set ringing fairly early on by an account of a pandemic which showed not just ignorance but active disdain for the history of medicine before the nineteenth century, by John M. Barry's seeming inclination towards the Great Man view of things, and by his signalling that women would be sidelined in The Great Influenza, it was his description of the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho as "primitive savages" that had me abandoning this on page 12. It is appalling that a major publishing house would print something like that in the twenty-first century.

Considering the current state of the world, this book was eerie. Recounting how the 1918 pandemic emerged and spread, this book is a work of history, but by changing a few names it could also be an in-depth report on current events. The worst part was the conclusion, in which the author discusses how prepared the world is for the spread of a similar pandemic. I had to double-check the publication date, because it's somewhat frightening how well understood and readily apparent the problems which have played out in 2020 were years previously. Excellent reading, especially if one is interested in the history of pandemics and for understanding how little humans appear to learn from them.

This would have been an excellent book without the covid pandemic, but of course the pandemic puts this right in the middle of things.

The book focuses on just a few years, especially 1918. We're introduced to some of the medical revolutionaries in their earlier careers, and we follow the trail to the determination of the viral pathogen of influenza in the late 1920s. The book mostly alternates between the struggles of the medical researchers to figure out what to do about the pandemic, and the story of the pandemics brutal devastation. There's some nice scientific explanation of details about the influenza virus family, and also quite a bit of reflective discussion on the nature of scientific research, the variety of approaches show more practiced by different researchers, etc.

The resonances with the current situation are quite remarkable. Barry does mention coronaviruses and some the their differences with influenza viruses.

This is really essential reading. show less

Shortly after the COVID pandemic began, I heard about this book. I finally read it in audiobook format narrated by Scott Brick and found it haunting. As other reviewers have said, the book tells a much broader history than the influenza pandemic. Instead, you will discover the long history of medicine and the rise of scientific medicine which only arrived in the USA around 1900.

I've studied history in detail for years. Yet, this book stood out almost uniquely for how it reflects 2020-2021 pandemic concerns. In particular, the author's closing advice at the end of the book was haunting. There were reasonable recommendations presented in the book in 2004 that could have significantly reduced the likelihood and impact of pandemics. I only show more hope the world learns better lessons from today's pandemic.

I also enjoyed how the book explains the nature of knowledge, especially as it relates to medicine and biology. When a crisis puts incredible pressure on researchers to "deliver a cure" fast, is it reasonable to cut corners?

One minor complaint relates to style... The author uses some variation of the express "influenza, only influenza" over and over and over again. The point is fair - people in 1918 consistently downplayed the significance of the pandemic because it was "just influenza." Yet the constant repetition of this phrasing throughout the book felt like overkill. show less

Because of the grave state of the world right now, I decided I needed to know more about the 1918 Influenza pandemic. This book came highly recommended and was as daunting and informative as foretold. The author pretty much covers the entire history of medicine and research development in the United States, then includes how viruses exist, spread, and mutate. Since I was only looking for the facts about how the pandemic itself progressed, I thought this information would bore me, but oh contraire! I found myself glued to each page and engrossed in every detail. John M. Barry has done exhaustive research on the subject, and I now have a well-rounded understanding of what we are currently facing. You wouldn't think that a book written in show more 2005 could paint a picture of our future so accurately, and yet, here we are. In 1918 the American people's fight for their lives in the pandemic was hampered by the first world war and a government that withheld vital information that could have saved lives. I would have hoped in hindsight that we'd learned from that horrific experience and would be better equipped to cope with one now, but nothing seems to be further from the truth. I'm now more afraid than ever that since our pandemic has chosen to rear its ugly head in the middle of a volatile election year, we may be in for the same treatment from our leaders.

At the very end of this book, the author quotes Abraham Lincoln—"A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." Truer words were never spoken. show less

Being that we're in the midst of a pandemic, it seems appropriate to read a book about the most comparable event in recent history.

The format of this book took me by surprise: it is really a history of medical science, spanning roughly a century from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th. Although Barry covers the grim details of the pandemic itself, it's scaffolded on a story of the scientific evolution and discovery.

Global population was roughly 1.8 billion around the time of the 1918 pandemic, and total deaths came to around 100 million according to the numbers Barry cites, giving a death rate of 5.5%. Today, our population is around 7.8 billion, and about 3 million people have died from COVID, making a death rate show more of 0.4%. Death rates were significantly higher in majority-world population in 1918, with death rates in some indigenous communities reaching 100%!

I was surprised to learn about the state of public health at the time. Social distancing and masks were widespread, and photos from the era look strikingly similar to photos from today.

It's impossible to understand the 1918 pandemic without understanding the context of World War I. The book is almost as much about the war as it is about disease. The point being: wars always spread disease, and during a war, all else is sacrificed for the purpose of victory. If the pandemic had shown up in peacetime, it would have spread much less slowly, and civilian populations would be much better taken care of. And most importantly, newspapers would have likely been more truthful. No one knew what was going on during the pandemic, because newspapers across the world didn't speak about it, which made the populace understandably distrustful and fearful.

One striking point the author makes is that the world today is actually less prepared to handle a pandemic similar to the 1918 pandemic because we now have a significant proportion of the population that is immunocompromised (which was not the case in 1918).

Barry notes that, unlike wars, pandemics are notably absent from fiction. For whatever reason, people simply don't want to write about them.

The book could be shorter. Sometimes Barry goes on lengthy tangents, or dives a little too deeply into subjects. That said, it still has good pacing, likely due to the chilling content. show less