I am a full time Mechanical Engineer, father and grad student going for my Master's degree. I don't have alot of time on front of a fireplace to read. When I bought this book I wanted a rundown of the pandemic and history involved. This book delivers that but I had to weed it out painstakingly. This book mostly gives biographies of the scientists and pathologists who researched the virus with a bit of info given on the actual subject of the book weaved into it. I constantly found myself skipping dozens of pages to get the the subject of the book. This one may end up on Ebay for whatever I can get for it.

Forget this over-blown newspaper story that does not really talk about either influenza as a disease or events of 1918 at all.

Buy "The Great Influenza" instead, which does both, and more. Or Crosby's book.

In 1918 the Great Flu Epidemic killed 40 million people worldwide. More Amer. soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu than were killed in battle during WW1. And no area of the globe was safe. The percentage of Amer. who died is comparable to 1.5 million Amer. today. Scientists have recently discovered shards of the flu virus in human remains frozen in the Arctic tundra & in scraps of tissues preserved in a gov't. warehouse. Kolata tracks the race to recover the live pathogen & probes the fear that has impelled gov't. policy. She delves into the history of the flu & previous epidemics, profiles the experts hot on the trail & the misguided amateurs, & details the science of this mortal disease. Illus