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Nov 08, 2007

Stephen rated it:

I am really surprised at the number of positive reviews this book got, both professional and consumer. I am currently a little more than halfway through and feel the need to write something in case I don't finish it and lose the desire.

Before critiquing Barry and his writing style, or lack thereof, his editor, Wendy Wolf deserves special mention. This is the first book I have ever read in which I have made special note of the editor and will refuse to read anything she works on in More...

8 comments like (24 people liked it)

Oct 18, 2007

Dave rated it:

This book had promise, and is good in spots - but the overall product suffers greatly from lack of direction and editorial control. If I could rate the best third of the book, I would give it five stars. The other two thirds of the book suffers substantially from a lack of focus, inclusion of unnecessary information, and overly dramatic narrative. And, to add insult to injury, the footnotes are handled in such a fashion that they become nearly useless.

In the afterword, it becomes qui More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Joel rated it:

Like a poorly crafted pop song, this book is full of occasional flashes of intelligence and brilliance, but is brought down to the level of the two star by it's repetitive nature and bogged down by details.

Okay, the metaphor doesn't really work with the "bogged down by details" part, but other than that, it's apt.

In attempts to create a rhythm, and strike a melodic note with his writing, Barry uses phrases he thinks are poignant to the point of annoyance. It's More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2009

Lizzy added it

This review was written by Liz Roland and posted by Lizzy Mottern.

This substantial book that exhaustively researched ( 60 pages of notes and bibliography) reads like a massive thriller, compelling the reader forward to find a vaccine/cure for this deadly, ever-mutating virus that killed more people in late 1918 and early 1919 than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. In the U.S., nearly seven times as many people died of this virus as died in World War I.

J More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 20, 2009

Sara W rated it:

Getting a little boring, so I'm taking a break from it. I think I expected a social history (how everyday people dealt with the flu, how it affected communities, etc.), and instead it's a very detailed history of medicine at the time (and well, well before the time of the flu!). I think I made it through a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the book (or more) before the Spanish flu began to get mentioned. The focus is on the medicine and doctors (individuals and as a profession - you get the whole history of More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

Mike rated it:

This book took me a long time to read, for several reasons. First, it really is two books in one. The first book is a history of the men and women and institutions involved in the change to scientific medicine in this country around the turn of the century. The second is the story of the influenza plague of 1918-1922 itself, the horrors of it, the death rate, the physical symptoms, the psychological effects, and the rather interesting fact that it seems to have been largely forgotten as the h More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2008

Kay rated it:

"One always tends to overpraise a long book because one has got through it." – E.M. Forster

It took me the better part of the summer to listen to this audiobook in my car (I don't drive that much) -- and I confess that it soon became more of a chore than a pleasure. I do wish there had been a competently edited abridged version, for if ever a book cried out for editing, it was this one.

Some of the book's strengths, however, include the exhaustive account of ho More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

The story of the 1918 pandemic. Scary stuff. Details about how flu infects. The story of medicine in the era. The stories of the medical men and women who were both prominent in the field and worked their butts off to try to figure out how influenza works and infects. The story of society and how it reacted to the pandemic, both in civilian areas (a lot of detail given to Philly) and in the military. One thing I discovered while reading this was that all this crap Bush has been pushing on us has More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2008

Jeff rated it:

Some people think I'm obsessed with disasters, but really I'm just fascinated by change. It's why I love history, among other things. 50 to 100 million people dying over the course of a year is a pretty big change, and the fact that it was all caused by a tiny little microscopic tidbit is utterly compelling. Mr. Barry does a more than thorough job of telling the story. You get a history of medicine, a science lesson in the biology of viruses, a review of the socio-political factors that led the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 08, 2009

Carole rated it:

I found the book a page turner...almost a medical mystery in the way it was laid out. As a physician, I was familiar with many of the names of physicians from the early 20th century, but the author draws such clear pictures of them--their character, experience, and flaws--that I found it a fascinating history of medicine as it developed late in the 19th century and into the early 10th century.

There was also fascinating political history in the way it impacted the communication and d More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Koeeoaddi rated it:

One of the problems with audiobooks is that you hear every single word, so poor writing and bad editing are impossible to ignore. I'm interested in this subject, but the repetition, the scattershot narrative and long dull sections are making it a tedious book to listen to.

I wish I could skip the first 100 pages, as another reviewer recommended, but that's probably about the place where I gave up. I'm going to borrow the print version and see if it gets any better. That way I can jus More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 05, 2009

Clif rated it:

John Barry is in love with science and we are the beneficiaries in this comprehensive account of the influenza epidemic that came at the end of WWI. Some of his prose is quite lyrical when he praises the scientific method and the virtue of rational thinking combined with imagination in some of the researchers he covers.

But there are villains as well as heroes here as we enter an earlier time where government did almost nothing while private initiatives and funding allied with individ More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

What happens when science, politics, and human nature collide in deadly conflict? Blood, death, and possibly some lessons for today. Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, is a master at fashioning morality tales out of tragedy. Here, Barry explores how early 20th-century advances in epidemiology and the efforts of heroic health professionals left lasting legacies for today, but failed in the face of their own era's political, institutional,

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0 comments like

Jan 24, 2009

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Ugh rated it:

This is terrifying and inspiring in equal measure, but then it was really the events themselves that are responsible for that - although Barry of course deserves credit for unearthing the stories and figures. More pertinently, it's fairly gripping for most of its 465 pages - more so when covering the individual and collective efforts of scientists and doctors, less so when recounting so many deaths here, so many deaths there (it's something of a mortality tale, if you will. Sorry.).

More...

0 comments like

Dec 20, 2011

Joanne rated it:

Who edited this book and WHY did they ever let John Barry away with destroying what could have been the most fascinating story about an epic period of recent human history with tedious hyperbole, stilted melodrama, and a simple lack of good sense? Barry spends far too much time talking about non-players/minor players and the minutiae of their lives apart from the influenza making the reading utterly dull in parts. On the other hand, much of the real and relevant writing about the epidemic is f More...

0 comments like

Nov 18, 2011

Thomas rated it:

It killed more people in 6 months than the Black Death killed in a century. People who were young and strong were the most likely to die. In the US, 650,000 people died. The average life expectancy in the US went down by 10 years. Worldwide, perhaps 100 million people died. And yet, it was only the flu. Even today, 90 years after the epidemic, it kills 36,000 Americans in a typical year and we are hardly more prepared to face another epidemic.

John M. Barry has written a fascinating acc More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

José added it

It's much more than a history of the epidemic itself. It does a great job of conveying (to the layperson) the epidemiology and pathology of the flu virus. Also covered is the transformation of the medical profession (and medical education) into what these are today. Also, the author puts the epidemic within the context of World War I and blames the prevalence of censorship and misinformation on the lack of effective action to prevent the spread of the disease in major population areas. As pertai More...

0 comments like

May 05, 2011

Jen rated it:

I would have given this book a better review, but the author failed to focus his subject. The first section of the book deals not with the influenza epidemic of 1918-1918 but the history and status of medical schools in the early 1900's. While this is a facinating topic and most readers are probably shocked to find out the majority of MD's in at the turn of the century graduated medical school without ever touching a patient, the length of discussion is not necessary to discuss the influenza e More...

0 comments like

Dec 22, 2010

Bruce rated it:

I'm not saying there's not a lot of meat here, just that it's not worth the digestive problems the author induces to get at them.

Bear with me as this is going to be something of an odd review, inasmuch as I'll be using it to compare two completely unrelated books, neither of which has anything to do with the subject of my short essay. Susan Casey's The Devil's Teeth is ostensibly about great white sharks and the Farallon Islands: a windswept, bird-festooned archipelago off the coast of More...

0 comments like

Jul 21, 2010

Paul rated it:

As a disaster junkie, hoping to be part of the solution in disasters rather than part of the problem, I have been monitoring and reporting on influenza and emerging diseases for about 10 years now. I am a member of American Society for Microbiology and AAAS and the DNA from the H1N1 virus from that particular epidemic was sequenced by David Taubenberger who used to go to GMU. (My micro prof is/was very proud of him!)

Behaviors like trench warfare, and lack of isolation and the deadly More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 05, 2009

Amy rated it:

I enjoyed this book but it was really long and repetitive. I'm certainly not an expert on editing, but there was way too much repetition. Some ideas were repeated three or four times using the exact same words. This book should have been cut to about half its finished length.

Having said that though, I finished. After checking it out three times and renewing each checkout the maximum number of times (one) I took 18 weeks to finish. That's got to be a record for me. I'm glad the More...

0 comments like

Aug 07, 2009

Kim rated it:

I think I'll be getting a flu shot this year. The story actually covers a great deal more than the 1918 influenza. The influenza story flashes in and out of the story line, sometimes more, sometimes less. The author recounts the United States' medical community's struggle to be taken seriously at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. He recounts how limits on the press (due to the war), limits on resources (due to the war), crowding of soldiers in cantonments ("), and p More...

0 comments like

Jul 22, 2009

David rated it:

Since I recently survived a minor bout with influenza, and since there is currently a worldwide pandemic of a highly contagious but relatively weak strain of the H1N1 virus, this book was particularly timely. The central focus of the book is the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed as many as a hundred thousand people around the world - interestingly, it was a particularly deadly form of H1N1 that caused that catastrophe.

There is a lot of preliminary discussion of medical history, diagnosis More...

0 comments like

Jun 05, 2009

Martin rated it:

I am reviewing the audiobook version. The reader was some guy I have never heard of, though his credits include the recent bio on Alexander Hamilton, which I also mean to listen to someday. I didn't like his mechanical voice, and his cadences were weird. The audio book was 16 compact discs, no small undertaking.
As for the book itself, it would be better to visually read the book because there are a lot of names, facts and figures. For me, the subplots were greater than the actual cover More...

0 comments like

May 15, 2010

Leslie rated it:

This is an outstanding lens through which to look at history. It chronicles the science and the death, mostly in the United States, of the 1918 influenza epidemic that killed more people than WWI. Although at times a bit monotonous--the death toll is long, insistent, and somewhat repetitive--it also enlightens the history of medical education and science in the U.S., and provides a fascinating window into the ways seemingly unrelated decisions can have profound repercussions.

For ex More...

0 comments like

Jan 26, 2010

Tami rated it:

Man Oh Man, I felt like a first grader reading a college book. So many science jargon way over my head but totally interesting part of history that I was not aware of. I enjoy reading and learning about history, it's the science part I still have a hard time understanding.

I did learn a ton but felt it could of been more concise and there were too many scientists to keep track of.

1918 - history's most lethal influenza virus struck, killing probably 100 million world wide. More...

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Jun 24, 2009

Linda rated it:

This book had so much potential, but the author's style made it hard to get into. He alternated between telling a story, giving flowery descriptions, and relating a long series of facts and figures. He started by setting the stage by giving a history of medicine before 1918. I thought the book would then build on that to take you through the epidemic and help you understand how it was viewed at the time. However, he kept jumping back and forth - introducing new characters and then dropping t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

Chris rated it:

This book took me weeks to read. I enjoyed it for the information I learned. I respect the author for the massive amount of time and effort it took to research. I found that the story did not flow well for me, and part of why it took me so long to read, is that I had to keep re-reading chapters to understand it. I had a hard time keeping people straight, which Doctor/investigator was who, where they worked, and what they did. I loved the historical research done on the medical profession p More...

1 comment like

Oct 05, 2008

Ken rated it:

Begins brilliantly with a concise and breezy history of infectious disease study. Continues as a very readable tale of the influenza epidemic, but eventually gets a bit bogged down in many minute details that I would just have well skipped (it’s a long book). However, overall a very important and significant account of how modern mankind dealt with a serious infectious agent, with grave implications for today’s world.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)