My history book club met today and we finished reading The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry.
It took us two meetings to read the whole thing and it was an fantastic book on the influenza flu pandemic of 1918-1919. It was written back in 2004 with an 2018 afterword. It was interesting to see all the mistakes that the United States made, how the pandemic was ignored – “it was just influenza,” was their excuse, how people would not wear masks or social distance, how ignored the medical community was, how incredibly deadly it was (people dying within a few days of contracting it), how due to WWI and President Wilson there was no information in the news as it was ‘bad news’. How it did not start in Spain, but in Kansas and how the US soldiers spread it around the US and the world as they were sent to the frontlines in France. There was a really interesting section on how influenza caused swelling in the brain, which caused mental health issues and how President Wilson probably had it as he was negotiating the WWI peace treaty. His attitude and ideas totally changed from before he had it, to after he had it and everyone noticed including the British PM. Not so fun fact: his attitude change possibly changed the course of world history. As I read the book I found myself thinking that we, as a society, have learned very little from this global pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people around the world, as all the same mistakes have been repeated over the past few months. Those who do not know history… Remember there is still no cure for influenza or even the common flu. A timely book and I would definitely recommend that everyone read it.
Our next book is my selection of William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. I have been a Dalrymple fan since I read his travel/history book From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East back in 1999.
