They date to agriculture since they need higher population densities. So opposite pattern of Black Death.īook has 8 parts with 2-5 chapters each. But elsewhere Spanish Flu was much bigger. In Europe death rate from Spanish Flu was the lowest. So apparently global perspective is recent scholarship. Circling the subject with widening circles of context, weaving it into space and time. We’re gonna get an African-women-narrative/Talmudic style story. Most deaths concentrated in 13 weeks in 1918, “broad in space, shallow in time” WW1 was opposite. Bigger than WW1+2 combined, much bigger than COVID at least so far, smaller than Black Death. Let’s see if it delivers.īasic facts well known by now: 50-100m dead 1918-20, 2.5-5%. I picked this out of several on the Spanish Flu because it promised a global perspective. This will probably be the last of my pandemic reads.

Pale Rider, by Laura Spinney, about the Spanish Flu.

Here is the original thread on twitter (I read it in September-October). But I picked Spinney’s book partly because it is more recent (it covers research on the Spanish Flu that wasn’t available in 2005 when Barry wrote his book), and partly because it self-consciously sets out to paint a global portrait. Bush being inspired by it in the wake of SARS to beef up the United States’ pandemic preparedness. There are several books on the topic, and the most popular is probably John Barry’s 2005 book, The Great Influenza, thanks to the now-widely-known-story of George W. This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Book NotesĬoncluding my pandemic-themed book reading binge for the year, here’s my summary of Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider (2017), perhaps the most comprehensive popular look at the Spanish Flu, among the many published to date.

Pale rider by laura spinney