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Pandemic 1918
The Story of the Deadliest Influenza in History
Synopsis
In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people.
German soldiers termed it Blitzkatarrh, British soldiers called it Flanders Grippe, but globally the pandemic gained the notorious title of 'Spanish Flu'.
Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died, in the United States it was 750,000, five times its total military fatalities in the war, while European deaths reached over two million. The numbers are staggering. And yet at the time, news of the danger was suppressed for fear of impacting war-time morale. Even today these figures are shocking to many - the war still hiding this terrifying menace in its shadow.
And behind the numbers are human lives, stories of those who suffered and fought it - in the hospitals and laboratories. Catharine Arnold traces the course of the disease, its origins and progress, across the globe via these remarkable people. Some are well known to us, like British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and writers Robert Graves and Vera Brittain, but many more are unknown. They are the doughboys from the US, gold miners in South Africa, schoolgirls in Great Britain and many others.
Published 100 years after the most devastating pandemic in world history, Pandemic 1918 uses previously unpublished records, memoirs, diaries and government publications to uncover the human story of 1918.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
Fascinating... lurid and pacy... the page-turning fascination of a detective thriller * BBC History Magazine * Catharine Arnold has done a remarkable job of relating the tales of a diverse set of sufferers, crafting an arresting and intimate narrative of the 1918 pandemic... a gripping tale that swoops down into the grisly detail, then soars up to give a broad view over the landscape of this calamitous moment in human history... Arnold writes beautifully, and starkly, of the tragedy that unfolded * New Statesman * Arnold's pacey history focuses on the stories of the individual, from scientists and politicians to the ordinary men and women who suffered * History Revealed * this timely study prompts us to reflect with gratitude on the advances of modern medicine * The Lady * Catharine Arnold's book offers us a coherent, well-researched and sanitary reminder that another pandemic could be just around the corner with equally horrific consequences. -- Sir Tony Robinson A lively catalogue of events and key figures in the course of the pandemic... what captivates most are the accounts of witnesses and survivors... it is often easy to forget about those left behind, but Arnold has given them a voice * The Lancet * Meticulously researched . . . vividly conveys the terror of the disease. -- Professor Sheena Cruickshank, FRSA Catharine Arnold is a master storyteller. I couldn't put it down * Lindsey Fitzharris *