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Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918
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About Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic
Product Description From National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin comes a fascinating look at the history and science of the deadly 1918 flu pandemic--and its chilling and timely resemblance to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak.In spring of 1918, World War I was underway, and troops at Fort Riley, Kansas, found themselves felled by influenza. By the summer of 1918, the second wave struck as a highly contagious and lethal epidemic and within weeks exploded into a pandemic, an illness that travels rapidly from one continent to another. It would impact the course of the war, and kill many millions more soldiers than warfare itself.Of all diseases, the 1918 flu was by far the worst that has ever afflicted humankind; not even the Black Death of the Middle Ages comes close in terms of the number of lives it took. No war, no natural disaster, no famine has claimed so many. In the space of eighteen months in 1918-1919, about 500 million people--one-third of the global population at the time--came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known, but the best estimate is between 50 and 100 million. In this powerful book, filled with black and white photographs, nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines the history, science, and impact of this great scourge--and the possibility for another worldwide pandemic today.A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year! Review "This is nonfiction at its best." —Booklist, starred review About the Author Albert Marrin is the author of numerous nonfiction books for young readers, including the National Book Award finalist Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy; Uprooted: The Japanese-American Experience During WWII; A Volcano Beneath the Snow: John Brown's War Against Slavery; Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives,and Thomas Paine: Crusader for Liberty, and FDR and the American Crisis. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I The Pitiless War Infectious disease is one of the great tragedies of living things--the struggle for existence between different forms of life. . . . Incessantly the pitiless war goes on, without quarter or armistice. --Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice and History, 1935 Visitors from the Deep Past For untold generations, before the invention of written history, people lived in small bands of relatives numbering, at most, a few dozen members. Our distant ancestors were merely creatures among other creatures, struggling to survive in an untamed wilderness. Called “hunter-gatherers” by modern social scientists, they were nomads, wanderers, people without a fixed place to live or call home. Each band had little contact with other bands, going from place to place, hunting animals and gathering roots, nuts, berries, and fruits to eat. Unable to preserve or store food, nomads had to move continually, and on foot, to find their next meal. Without the wheel, a later invention, they also lacked draft animals; they kept no animals, except dogs, used for hunting and, in a pinch, for a meal. They carried their few possessions strapped to their backs or lashed between two wooden poles, which the women dragged along the ground. The able-bodied men walked ahead, armed with clubs, stone-tipped spears, and bows and arrows, eyes peeled for danger or for game to pursue. Camps usually were just overnight stops to eat and sleep. But if the hunting in an area was good, the band might stay for a few days longer to butcher a kill, fill their bellies, and rest up for the trek ahead. Hunting accidents, wounds, falls from trees, feuds within a band, and clashes with other bands took a steady toll. Still, the nomadic lifestyle had one advantage: it limited the impact of infectious diseases carried by animals. All types of living beings have diseases that afflict them alone. Sometimes, however, a disease attacking one life-form “crosses over” and infects another life-form. Ancient nomads did not live amid he
