Introduction
Trying to make sense of the time period: 1910 to 1920, I referred to various media and formats. I began with Alfred W. Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Using Crosby's reportage as a starting point, I viewed 10 hours of video or a mini series based on the book by Professor Hew Strachan called The First World War (2005), Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937), and Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957).

Alfred W. Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
According to Crosby, in the period covering August 1918 through to March 1919, "Spanish" influenza spread worldwide. The estimated death toll, approximately 25 million; the exact number is unknown. It is argued in this book that more people died of the flu than in the First World War - hence the connection. Subsumed in this 25 million dead where an estimated 500,000 Americans. Ironically, despite the lethality of the disease, Spanish flu pandemic is all but ancient history today. In this detailed reportage by Crosby, he retells the history of the time with the Spanish influenza at the center. In the process of doing this, Crosby unravels the extent of effect on the American psyche, and makes an attempt to explain its eventual loss in our national narrative. Crosby's musing framed the events of the decade in a new light - the advantage of which is - I had no other frame of reference. I was expecting traditional history - this happened, then that happened - but I got much more.
In a later section, I will frame this perspective of the decade against another narrative that all but only mentioned this whole pandemic in one line in almost 503 minutes of video. Is it all about perspective? Why did Crosby seek to frame the year of the pandemic (and the decade) while Strachan and the documentary crew relegate it to a mere mention? The answer may not be forthcoming - but I just wanted to put it out there for consideration. Crosby is also famous for a more extensive and, I would argue, better told narrative called Ecological Imperialism.
America's Forgotten Pandemic is extensive in its range. The book is divided into 15 chapters, divided into 5 parts. In "An Abrupt Introduction to Spanish Influenza" we are introduced to the big picture regarding the phenomenon of the Spanish Influenza.
In "Spanish Influenza: The First Wave - Spring and Summer, 1918" we see Spanish Influenza advancing in stages - virulent in some places and not in others. Too soon to start taking records and too confused to care - the body count mounts but the records are in disarray. What is obvious is that there is a problem - the extent of which will never be fully documented. Spanish influenza is seen in Africa, Europe, and America.
In "The Second and Third Waves" is where we see the extent of the reportage of Crosby. Methodical to a degree that seems almost unfeeling - Crosby begins to analyze the movement of the disease and begins to introduce us to the genesis of American policy vis-à-vis epidemiology. If you just read Crosby's narrative, you would think everything happened around the disease. Even Crosby's take on the discussion between Italy's Orlando, England's George, France's Clemenceau, and America's Wilson is framed around everyone getting sick of the flu. Was it really as widespread as Crosby paints it out to be? If it was, why is it so absent in all the other narratives? Was if because the First World War and that narrative was so dominant or that it did not fit in with the New World Order narrative of Woodrow Wilson. The reportage gets specific - Crosby goes city by city.
In "Measurements, Research, Conclusions, and Confusions" we get more reportage and more indications that a definitive explanation of the cause, the spread, and the resolution of the pandemic will not be arriving. Hints, statistics and tests lead to hogs as the culprit - but nothing definitive. He asked, in Chapter 14, "Where did the flu of 1918 go?" Chapter 14 is a transition to the Afterword where even more speculation is to be had - this time more human than scientific.
In "Afterword" we get "An inquiry in the peculiarities of human memory." Yes, why were we so quick to forget this pandemic but constantly remind ourselves of the Black Plague when, "Nothing else - no infection, no war, no famine - has ever killed so many in as short a period" (Crosby 311)? Crosby speculates that the American public did not want to take away from the heroism of the First World War so they subsumed the pandemic and it's narrative "tended to be concealed within that of the war" (Crosby 320).
In the end, much like Sasha Abramsky argues in American Furies, the very banality of the issue (in Abramsky's case the prisons, in Crosby's case the pandemic) is its own worst enemy. According to Crosby, "The very nature of the disease and its epidemiological character encouraged forgetfulness in the societies it affected. The disease moved too fast, arrived, flourished, and was gone before it had any ephemeral effects on the economy and before many people had time to fully realize just how great was the danger" (Crosby 321). This case, along with lynching examination previous deliberation is proof of a nation starving for spectacle. But, harkening back to the banality issue - in the end, we just forget by what we remember.

Hew Strachan's The First World War (2005)
Is this the documentary to end all documentaries? Arguably not - but a compelling argument could be made for this. However, there were numerous documentaries about the decade and the war that I would have loved to have seen: BBC's `1914-18' and `The Great War,' the precursor of `The World at War' but I don't have all the time in the world. My sense, after having seen this comprehensive documentary - which begins with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and ends with the Armistice and the League of Nations - I am videoed out. The range and coverage of this documentary is extensive. The series brings in the concurrent stories (of the years in question) of events happening in Russia, Arabia, and Africa. Through this video one really gets a sense of the worldwide involvement. This documentary gave an objective and impersonal view - much less missed any and all references to the 1918 pandemic. For the personal view/perspective we need to turn to Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion, Stanley Kubrick's The Paths of Glory, and return to Alfred Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 to round out the perspective.

Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937)
Last week, in preparation for the discussion regarding First World War and the era between 1910 to 1920 we had the pleasure to watch Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion. My recollection is vague at best but it did leave a lasting impression on me. As a summary, the story begins with the capture of two French officers - De Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and Marechal (Jean Gabin). Captain De Boeldieu is the personification of the cultured upper class. Conversely, Lieutenant Marechal, who being a mechanic prior to signing up represents the common man. The prison camp becomes a meeting place for soldiers of all classes and backgrounds. The objective is plot an escape. In the process of plotting the escape, the duo meets up with a third character - Rosenthal (Marcel Dario). Rosenthal is somewhat an odd choice but be that as it may, Renoir places this character, a son of wealthy Jewish bankers, as the fulcrum between the aristocratic De Boeldieu and the everyman Marechal.
In-class discussion revealed that the Nazis banned Renoir's The Grand Illusion and ordered all copies seized they first occupied France during the Second World War on the orders of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels ordered all copies to be destroyed - luckily all copies were not and we got to see it. What was it about this movie that would capture the ire and imagination of top Nazi officials? If what was talked about in The First World War had any validity, then it was certainly discouraged to fraternize with the enemy, much less Jews (the relationship between Rosenthal and Marechal) as well as the relationship between Marechal and Elsa (Dita Parlo) the German woman with the child at the end of the story. Such miscegenation or even just fraternizing between two warring European countries would certainly have raised the ire of the Nazi high command.

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957)
OK, so it was not exactly The Grand Illusion but Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory situates war on a micro level and gave a visual sense of the First World War. Much like Renoir's classic - this is a movie about people - without agency in a world gone insane. Soldiers are seen as tools to be used by Generals who fought wars from Chateaus. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) is the commander of the 701st Infantry Regiment of the French Army dug in along the Western Front's "No Man's Land." The story starts in 1916 when the Allied forces had been in need of a real break. Dax, it is revealed to us early was one of France's greatest criminal lawyer prior to the war. Idealistic and reticent, he defies General Mireau (George Macready) to the bitter end. The generals caricatured and spoken of earlier are General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) and General Mireau. Broulard orders Mireau that he must attack the unassailable "Ant Hill" and that this space is to be captured within 48 hours. The movie is test of will between the big three: Dax, Broulard, and Mireau - and all the casualties that begin to mount based on their petty politics. An unapologetic and unsentimental, it brought home the futility of war and brought me a different perspective of the era.

Conclusion: Bringing it all together - A Better Understanding of a Critical Time in History
As each decade fused into the next, the last transitioning out into the current and the current transitioning to the next it seems like demarcating time by decades almost seems inorganic. The readings and the films - particularly the documentary - made it seem like the First World War was preparation for the Second. Whole world re-organized, a league of nations being formed, a massive pandemic leaving our purview as quickly as it came in - the United States on the verge of being a major, if not "the" major world player. Compelled to compare Crosby's works - it seemed as if with America's Forgotten Pandemic the object was less to answer the questions but merely to pose it. Absent is the certitude which marked the theories and musing of Ecological Imperialism. I feel vindicated in thinking that it is not as important to come with answers but that we have the real courage to ask the hard questions.

Miguel Llora

Like another reviewer here, I'd say that unless you're looking for tables and statistics, you should get "The Great Influenza" by John Barry instead of this book. Also like that reviewer, this is not a knock on Crosby at all, but a tribute to Barry. Barry's book really is an incredible work by any standard. Compared to Crosby, it is simply richer and deeper, whether the 2 writers are addressing the same thing-- for example, both focused on Philadelphia, possibly the hardest hit city in the country-- or in the way Barry explains things that Crosby never addresses at all-- such as the political and scientific context, how viruses behave, immunology. Yet you certainly won't be disappointed if you buy this book and you're interested in the subject.

One thing you should NOT do is get any of the other books on influenza. Most of them are outright crap. None of the other books can compete with Crosby's, not to mention Barry's.

Crosby's classic account of this pandemic begins in the spring of 1918 with the virus just getting started in American military training camps. He then discusses how it devastated Philadelphia and San Francisco, contrasting the two cities handling of the crisis. The rest of the book looks at how the flu affected the US army in France and how it impacted the Paris peace conference. Toward the end we get a fascinating but grisly description of how Alaskan native towns were destroyed by the disease.

Crosby focuses on the US here, and does not take a global perspective, as most books have. We learn nothing, for instance, about how over twelve million perished in India. But then Crosby is an American historian, and we gain something by limiting our focus.

Why is this disaster forgotten? Of course the war had much to do with it; people have trouble absorbing two calamities at the same time. But I also believe the public remained calm for a simple reason: the sickness was known to be flu. An unusual and deadly flu it was to be sure, but it is hard for many to be truly afraid of a disease that strikes every year and lasts a season. Most probably thought they would make it through until spring. For a half million in the states, this turned out to be a delusion.

Crosby's classic account of this pandemic begins in the spring of 1918 with the virus just getting started in American military training camps. He then discusses how it devastated Philadelphia and San Francisco, contrasting the two cities handling of the crisis. The rest of the book looks at how the flu affected the US army in France and how it impacted the Paris peace conference. Toward the end we get a fascinating but grisly description of how Alaskan native towns were destroyed by the disease.

Crosby focuses on the US here, and does not take a global perspective, as most books have. We learn nothing, for instance, about how over twelve million perished in India. But then Crosby is an American historian, and we gain something by limiting our focus.

Why is this disaster forgotten? Of course the war had much to do with it; people have trouble absorbing two calamities at the same time. But I also believe the public remained calm for a simple reason: the sickness was known to be flu. An unusual and deadly flu it was to be sure, but it is hard for many to be truly afraid of a disease that strikes every year and lasts a season. Most probably thought they would make it through until spring. For a half million in the states, this turned out to be a delusion.

This book is chock full of information inserted fairly seamlessly in good writing that recalls the era well. The update [itself still decades old] makes plain the ways this kind of historical writing style has changed and is worth reading at the outset.

This book was written several decades back, yet is entirely relevant to today. The subject matter is the great flu pandemic of 1918 -- one of the worse mass die-offs in human history that somehow we seem to have collectively forgotten. Full of interesting statistics, the author describes the waves of the disease and the terrible mortality, especially among the young. I first heard of the pandemic many years ago when my great grandmother showed me family pictures. There was one particular picture, a beautiful young woman (her daughter), over which she wept as she described her and how quickly she died. I was surprised that I hadn't heard the story before, but my mother told me that no one talked about that time -- it was just too terrible to think about. I can also recall having the "Asian Flu" as a child. That was truly awful. You find it difficult to breath, you are delerious, you ache horribly. Now we find that there is possibly a new pandemic coming, if and when the Avian flu mutates. Be afraid. So read this well written book if you want to know what may happen.

This book was written several decades back, yet is entirely relevant to today. The subject matter is the great flu pandemic of 1918 -- one of the worse mass die-offs in human history that somehow we seem to have collectively forgotten. Full of interesting statistics, the author describes the waves of the disease and the terrible mortality, especially among the young. I first heard of the pandemic many years ago when my great grandmother showed me family pictures. There was one particular picture, a beautiful young woman (her daughter), over which she wept as she described her and how quickly she died. I was surprised that I hadn't heard the story before, but my mother told me that no one talked about that time -- it was just too terrible to think about. I can also recall having the "Asian Flu" as a child. That was truly awful. You find it difficult to breath, you are delerious, you ache horribly. Now we find that there is possibly a new pandemic coming, if and when the Avian flu mutates. Be afraid. So read this well written book if you want to know what may happen.

It is unfortunate that the awesome power of vitamin C to fight infectious diseases -- including influenza and the common cold -- was not known in 1918. Many thousands of lives could have been saved if vitamin C had been readily available as it is now.

Unfortunately, the power of vitamin C to fight influenza is still not acknowledged by the orthodox medical establishment, even though numerous published scientific studies have shown vitamin C, at adequate doses, to be very powerful at killing viruses and, thus, protecting us from their ill effects. One reason for this misunderstanding is that the orthodox medical establishment considers only about 90 mg of vitamin C daily to be needed by humans, and this dosage will not fight influenza. However, the actual dosage of vitamin C most humans need is at least 2,000 mg each day under normal conditions and much higher amounts when an infection starts to occur.

For those who are willing to consider the benefits of vitamin C and other nutrients in fighting illness, I recommend the book How to Live Longer and Feel Better by Dr. Linus Pauling, the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes.

This book is well-researched, and has pulled together, in narrative and tabular form, the disparate data and details of the influenza pandemic of 1918. Although the timelines move back and forth through the narrative, the evolution of epidemiology and research chronicled in the book is fascinating. The hair-raising depiction of widespread illness and resulting deaths during the pandemic paint a far different picture than is discussed in epidemiology or history courses. Extrapolating events from 1918 (and other pandemics) to current events with Avian influenza makes for sobering and thought-provoking consideration of worldwide pandemic preparedness, or lack thereof.

Without a doubt this is an excellent, provocative, and thoughtful book. In and of itself I'd give it 5 stars... But that would make it impossible to rate John Barry's The Great Influenza higher. Of course Barry's book came out 25 years after Crosby's, and to some extent is derivative. But it goes so far beyond Crosby, and adds so much context about scientists, the virus itself, and politics, there is unfortunately no reason to read Crosby any more. Actually that's wrong-- there is a reason. If you wnat tables and statistics, Crosby includes them. Barry does not. Although Barry's book does read better, and has a real narrative flow and scientist-characters.

Crosby's classic study of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic-- while recently supplemented by John M. Barry's excellent new book THE GREAT INFLUENZA and Gina Kolatta's FLU-- remains the Source Authority for all serious students of this devastating killer virus.

While researching FINAL EPIDEMIC, my own novel of the re-emergence of the Spanish flu of 1918, Crosby's book was a goldmine of information... and a primary reason why I spent so many sleepless nights during the time I was writing on the subject.

Crosby's book is, without doubt, the classic study of the H1N1 killer flu virus and ranks among the best of medical non-fiction narrative around.

Frighteningly, killer flu and the possibility of a lethal pandemic is again a timely subject.

A startling fact about the original 1918 plague that devastated humanity --notable, since it occurred within the lifespan of many still alive today-- is the collective amnesia that so often surrounds that event.

Few Americans realize that it's extremely probable that they have a family member only a generation or two ago who fell prey to the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic; tales of when the cry "bring out your dead!" echoed along American streets were seldom passed from those who witnessed it to those of us who descended from the survivors. It takes a trip to virtually any cemetery to bring the death toll home to us, as marker after marker identifies the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic. Worldwide, deaths in 1918-1919 totalled at least 40 million humans, and very likely as many as 100 million-- all within a timespan measured in months.

As I write this, an avian influenza virus not unlike that which triggered the 1918 pandemic, if forcing the mass slaughter of chickens and other birds throughout Asia. It is an attempt to forestall the very real possibility that the virus (which already has infected human victims through bird-to-human transmission, and currently has a 70 percent mortality rate among human victims) could acquire genes which would allow for human-to-human transmission.

During research for FINAL EPIDEMIC, I interviewed dozens of medical researchers and epidemeologists. Without exception, each stated that their greatest fear was a resurgence of a influenza virus similar to the 1918 variant, which through incubation in humans mutated into a unprecedented killer of humanity. Based on the cyclic nature of flu pandemics, I was told, mankind was already overdue-- and, worse: woefully unprepared-- for such an emerging viral Shiva.

Influenza was, and remains, a universal threat: As Crosby wrote in "America's Forgotten Pandemic," "I know how not to get AIDS. I don't know how not to get the flu."

--Earl Merkel
Author, FINAL EPIDEMIC (PenguinPutnam 2002)
and DIRTY FIRE (PenguinPutnam 2003)

I'm a former police officer, college graduate (B.Sci. Psychology), and past candidate for the Kansas House of Representatives. I bought this book prior to 9/11 and was taken back then. It gathered a little dust, but the other day I took it off the shelf and read it again. It reads like a blueprint for our future. I'm not an alarmist, but supposedly that flu thing in 1918 started at Fort Riley, KS (my neck of the woods) so I can speak from the heart... And here's the message: All of you in the health profession and any other protection profession who are reading this review and are considering buying this book should push those buttoms and BUY this book. Everything the "Higher Ups" are teaching you at those seminars and conferences is a bunch of "what ifs." In the life span of our grandfathers--everything in this book happened.

Excellent historical perspective on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

Extensive facts and figures about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic which [in a period of ten months] likely claimed the lives of a 100 million people worldwide.

Why did the Spanish flu kill 25 million people worldwide? Why did it kill those in the prime of life more efficiently than the usual flu victims, the very young or the very old? Where did it go after its nine month run through the world in 1918-1919? Can it strike again? Why has it been largely forgotten by historians? Engaging questions all, and Alfred Crosby asks them and to a greater or lesser extent seeks to answer them. Still, this book is less than it could be, written for too much of its length as if he were keeping his narrative powers deliberately in check. For those that doubt he is capable of powerful writing, the last chapter stands as rebuttal, with its tribute to Katherine Anne Porter -- to whom the book is dedicated -- and an adult's recollection of how the flu brought home at age seven the early realization that "life was not a perpetual present, and that even tomorrow would be part of the past, and that for all my days and years to come I too must one day die." I'd like to have seen more of those personal close-ups of the impact of the flu instead of the grim numbers in Philadelphia, then the grim numbers in San Francisco, then the grim numbers in Alaska. It is as if Crosby wanted to write a history of the era as it was lived with the flu and wound up writing a journal of morbidity and mortality, and the virus sleuthing that followed. He aimed for a vision and achieved a laboratory slide -- no mean accomplishment, but not, I think, what we or he were finally after.

I wish this book had been written by more of a drama queen. It's more of an epidemiological survey when I wanted at least a couple horsemen of the apocalypse. I became interested in the influenza pandemic because of Malcolm Gladwell's article, "The Dead Zone" in the September 29, 1997 issue of The New Yorker. I'd hoped this book could flesh out the details, but it was more dry stats than I wanted. Someone looking for a sweeping historical survey of the flu and it's effects won't find it here.

Between Alfred Crosby and Richard Collier, these two men have written the definitive works on the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Subsequent writers like Iezzoni and Kolata heavily use the primary reseach done by both Crosby and Collier.

Crosby's work does, to some degree, lack eloquent narrative, but it is a superbly researched book on the pandemic. Crosby sticks to the facts and statistics and has achieved a work that is well written history. I would recommend reading Richard Collier's work in conjunction with this work to get the full impact of the pandemic. Crosby focuses on the pandemic's impact in America while Collier focuses on the more global experience. While Collier may have a better flowing narrative, Crosby includes all of the hard statistics which lends a different, more concrete feeling to the subject matter. Overall, if Crosby's work is the left shoe, Collier's is the right shoe. You can read one without the other, but, why would you want to?

I spent 2.5 years studying the flu and the havoc it wrought on Philadelphia, and Mr. Crosby's book was always within reach. It is one of the best sources one will find when studying the flu. Some may complain that it lacks a certain depth, agreed. But that's not what Mr. Crosby set out to do. He wanted to document this forgotten period in American History in a book that was both readable and not impossible to finish in under a decade. As far as his sources go, I feel he did a good job. I search the city high and low and came up with maybe a few items that Mr. Crosby did not. Overall, if you want to read a well researched and well written book, buy "America's Forgotten Pandemic."

This is by far the best book on the subject so far, and it's really quite good. But some of the research is a little superficial (for example, nearly all the material on Philadelphia, the hardest hit city in the country, comes from a single newspaper, when at least 7 or 8 were being published at the time).