Great Influenza (Barry)

The Great Pandemic: The History of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
John M. Barry, 2004
Penguin Publishing
526 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143036494


Summary
Over a year on The New York Times bestseller list when first published.

At the height of WWI, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide.

It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century.

But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon.

John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
John M. Barry is the author of four previous books: Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports (2001); Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed Amer­ica (1997); The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer (1992, cowritten with Steven Rosenberg); and The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington (1989), which the New York Times called one of the "11 best books ever written on Congress and Washington." He lives in New Orleans and Wash­ington, D.C. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Easily our fullest, richest, most panoramic history of the subject.
New York Times Book Review


A sobering account of the 1918 flu epidemic, compelling and timely.
Boston Globe


ReviewMonumental… powerfully intelligent… not just a masterful narrative… but also an authoritative and disturbing morality tale.
Chicago Tribune


Hypnotizing, horrifying, energetic, lucid prose.
Providence Observer


History brilliantly written… a masterpiece.
Baton Rouge Advocate


Barry captures the sense of panic and despair that overwhelmed stricken communities and hits hard at those who failed to use their power to protect the public good.… Society's ability to survive another devastating flu pandemic, Barry argues, is as much a political question as a medical one.
Publishers Weekly

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion of THE GREAT INFLUENZA … then take off on your own:

1. How does John M. Barry present the state of U.S. science and medicine in the pre-World War I era? Consider, for instance, that admission to medical school had more to do with one's ability to pay tuition than on academic achievement.

2. What role did the founding of John Hopkins Medical School and William Welch play in the development of modern medicine in the U.S.?

3. Talk about the many misguided decisions by military and politial leaders that eventually led to so many influenza causalities.

4. Hiram Johnson said that "the first causality when war comes is truth." What does he mean, and how does that bear on the subject of Barry's book?

5. As a layperson rather than physician or scientist, were you able to follow Barry's descriptions of the research at the time into the mechanisms of the influenza virus in the cell? Why, for instance, is influenza such a formidable opponent? Talk about the role of RNA in the spread of the disease. 

6. Talk about the toll of the disease, both in terms of number of people who contracted it and in terms of its effect on the human body.

7. Despite the horrific devastation, what were some of positive benefits that came about in the wake of the influenza?

8. Do you see any parallels between the 1918-1919 pandemic and the Coronavirus pandemic of 2019-2020? Did we forgotten the lessons of history?
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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