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Name: Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World: Spinney, Laura: 9781610397674: Amazon.com: Books
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Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World Hardcover – September 12, 2017

by Laura Spinney (Author)

4.4 2,927 ratings

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In 1918, the Italian-Americans of New York, the Yupik of Alaska and the Persians of Mashed had almost nothing in common except for a virus--one that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times and had a decisive effect on the history of the twentieth century.

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth--from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I.

In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted--and often permanently altered--global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also created the true "lost generation." Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Impressive...Set against the devastating backdrop of global contagion, it is individual lives and deaths, discovered in letters, diaries, biographies and memoirs, that epitomize this rich account. Spinney invokes potent images...Along with exemplary research, Spinney's narrative is packed with fascinating, quirky detail...As the centenary of this monumental event approaches, other volumes on the pandemic will undoubtedly appear. Pale Rider sets the bar very high."―Nature

"A saga of tragedies and a detective story... Pale Rider is not just an excavation but a reimagining of the past. As the book progresses, the flu is cast increasingly as a character that crops up Zelig-like at important moments in history, altering the course of events previously unattributed to it.... Compelling."―The Guardian

"A book about the Spanish flu could so easily be dreary-complex pathology interwoven with pervasive tragedy. Not so Pale Rider. I've seldom had so much fun reading about people dying. Laura Spinney, a science journalist, is adept at explaining arcane scientific research in an entertaining, comprehensible way. ...With superb investigative skill and a delightfully light-hearted writing style, Spinney extends her analysis far beyond the relatively short duration of the plague....Spinney finds it odd that we know so little about the worst calamity to affect the human race. So do I. There are tens of thousands of books about the First World War, yet that flu is, arguable, more relevant to our world. While global war is, we hope, a thing of the past, global pestilence hovers like a vulture."―The Times

"Spinney argues that almost a century later, the Spanish flu is 'still emerging from the shadows of the First World War' in our collective memories. She sets out to rectify this, knowing just which medical mysteries and haunting vignettes will give the pandemic full purchase on our imaginations."―New York Times Book Review

"Wide-sweeping... Spinney is a storyteller with a science writer's cabinet of facts. Retracing influenza's death trail over nine continents, she attempts to show how the flu affected not only the war-torn West but also remote communities in South Africa, China, and Brazil. The book reveals how desperately and differently people reacted and how gravely the flu influenced the modern world, touching everything from medicine to business and from politics to poetry."―Science

"Influenza, like all viruses, is a parasite. Laura Spinney traces its long shadow over human history... Ms Spinney ties the virulence of Spanish flu to its genetic irregularities and does a good job of explaining containment strategies through epidemiology... In Europe and North America the first world war killed more than Spanish flu; everywhere else the reverse is true. Yet most narratives focus on the West... Ms Spinney's book goes some way to redress the balance."―The Economist

"Spinney's book is intensely readable, and instead of a strictly chronological account she circles around history, epidemiology and culture to give a panoramic portrait of the previous century's most deadly pandemic. We are probably due another one of these any day now, this is a great way to see what the future holds."―TheAwl

"A page turner that should easily satisfy armchair historians and epidemiologists and anybody who likes a good, if gruesome, yarn."―Foreign Policy

"A vividly recreated, grimly fascinating book...Coolly, crisply and with a consistently sharp eye for the telling anecdote...Spinney demonstrates how Spanish flu cast a long, dark shadow over the 20th century."―The Daily Mail

"One of the many strengths of Pale Rider is to show its readers the regional variations that combat took throughout the world, from Bristol Bay to Zamora to Unalaska Island... For all the tragedies and upheavals, the book portrays, Pale Rider actually paints an oddly hopeful picture of a population more sensitized to early warnings and largely more willing to heed them."―TheNational

About the Author

Laura Spinney is a science journalist and a literary novelist. She has published two novels in English, and her writing on science has appeared in National Geographic, Nature, the Economist, and the Telegraph, among others. Her oral history portrait of a European city, Rue Centrale, was published in 2013 in French and English.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs; 1st edition (September 12, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1610397673
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1610397674
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.24 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #708,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #257 in Epidemiology (Books)
- #508 in Sociological Study of Medicine
- #18,645 in World History (Books)

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Richard Joltes

History with a context, the way it's supposed to be written

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2019

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This is highly informative, and very well written in an engaging style. The big things about the epidemic, aside from the 50-100 million killed by it (we'll never know the actual number, but it keeps growing), are the knock-on effects whether direct or indirect. Consider:

1) it may have changed the course of WWI by disabling vast numbers of soldiers (especially Germans) during the 1918 spring offensive.

2) it helped galvanize the creation of public health systems worldwide.

3) it actually killed far more people than the war, and denuded whole areas in rural or otherwise more backward nations.

4) the resulting generational malaise, and potentially virus-linked depression among survivors, probably contributed to the art and music of subsequent generations.

5) it really kick-started virology (at the time they suspected viruses existed but couldn't see them) and epidemiology as disciplines.

This is how good history is written...it's not just some dry-as-dust chronology of names, dates, and places but also puts the events in context and offers insights into their effect on society, both immediate and long term.

One person found this helpful

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M Woody

Well worth the read...with a caveat or two.

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2018

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Overall I found this book to be a compelling account of the Spanish flu pandemic and the it's ramifications, but with a couple of caveats.

As some other reviews have pointed out, the narrative does jump around temporally a little more than seems necessary and can be a little bit disorienting. Overall the author is an accomplished writer and overcomes this for the most part.

I did find a couple of factual errors. Although relatively minor, factual errors always raise the question as to whether there could be others that I didn't pick up on while reading. The first is simply a geographical error when describing the relationship of Haskell County, KS to Camp Funston. The books description would place Haskell County in Missouri rather than western Kansas. The second factual error had to do with the estimation of death from the flu in Russia. The author indicates that there were 450,000 documented deaths in Russia which "corresponds to 0.2 percent of the Russian population at that time." Although I am not a statistician I am pretty sure that would extrapolate to a population of 225 million which is clearly incorrect.

I also found some the attempts to link the flu pandemic to other world events or cultural events to seem like a bit of a stretch. The author correctly points out from the beginning that the pandemic has not received the regard that it deserves as such a major event of the 20th century, however she does seem to be trying to over inflate it's impact in some areas. This would be a minor quibble however in my opinion.

Overall this is an important book and worth the time to read.

86 people found this helpful

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Lynda L. Blevins

Informative look at the Spanish Flu

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2021

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I was attracted to this book because… I’m interested in the impact of the Spanish Flu on my family in particular, but what we should have learned from it.

This book was about A history of the Spanish Flu of 1918 and it moved through the world and how the world reacted.

Things I liked about this book- Spinney provides factual information and stories of real people and their struggles in these times. It is very difficult to read how similar our reactions and experiences have been to this pandemic.

Why you should read this book - To learn all the things we should have been taught generation to generation to be prepared for our times. We are re-learning the hard way, everything our ancestors experienced.

This book lived up to the back cover copy - The information on the back cover is very revealing on the content of the book. She shows how this overlooked catastrophe that forever changed humanity.

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Horror_Lover

A Fascinating Historical Account That Sheds Lots of Light on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2020

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Pale Rider is, hands down, the most fascinating account of a disease that I’ve ever read. Even better, it’s one of the most fascinating historical accounts overall. For these reasons alone, anyone with an interest in topics such as the 1918 flu pandemic will get much out of Laura Spinney’s excellent account.

This book takes on special significance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only does it showcase just how little has changed in the past 102 years, but it also acts as almost a crystal ball into the next 20 years or so of humanity.

It’s impossible to read about each stage of the 1918 flu without comparing it to what’s been happening globally in 2019-2020 (so far). Sadly, many of the worst aspects of the all too human reactions from 1918-1919 are fully on display again. And, in some cases (such as the killing of a security guard who asked a woman to wear a mask before entering a store in the US), they’ve grown even worse over time.

I was particularly intrigued by Spinney’s look at how much the 1918 pandemic changed the world, ranging from healthcare to art. Combine that with a solid introduction to viruses that’s understandable for laypeople, along with the inclusion of many of that era’s most well-known historical figures, and you get a non-fiction book that’s just as riveting as many fictional medical thrillers.

How many similar things will occur as a result of COVID-19? We may need to wait several decades to find out, but I hope Spinney is around to give us her insight at that time.

One person found this helpful

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S Hunter

Story told in circles...

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2021

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At the very beginning of the book, the author describes how she will be telling the story in circles, similar to the way African Women tell oral histories or stories. I am not a fan of the order the story is told and would have preferred a more linear telling of the story. The author does an excellent job researching the topics and affects on history. I thoroughly enjoyed the sections discussing the biology of viruses and history of epidemiology and virology. I didn't enjoy all the isolated stories and histories as much. Overall this is a very relevant book and the reactions by society back in 1918 are scarily close to reactions today.

4 people found this helpful

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A. Jones

fascinating and sad read especially post Covid

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2023

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Fascinating book mapping out flu epidemics over time with a focus on the Spanish flu. Sad to see its warnings not heeded and interesting section on memory at the end

C.B.

Absolut lesenswert

Reviewed in Germany on June 16, 2021

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Wissenschaftsbasiert beschrieben und sehr eindringlich, wie kleine Entscheidungen, das Leben vieler beeinflussen können. Die Verbreitung um die ganze Welt in verschiedenen Wellen und eigentlich unglaublich, wie globalisiert die Welt damals schon war. Europa gezeichnet vom Krieg, damals mit wenig Möglichkeiten der Pandemiebekämpfung. wirklich lesenswert.

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Andres Piñeiro

A deep insight

Reviewed in Spain on June 16, 2020

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It's a great book that offer a deep insight into how humans react to a pandemic. Really amusing and full of relevant anecdotes.

Rajiv Chopra

A Very Good Book

Reviewed in India on April 20, 2020

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Laura Spinney focuses on The Spanish Flu in this book. She did mention that, despite the devastation it caused, it has not received the historical significance it deserves.

Laura traces the history of the Flu; she talks about various pandemics that have affected us humans and then gives us an idea of how they could move from animals and birds to humans.

Her descriptions of the Flu are graphic, without being obscene. She strikes a delicate balance between the science and the storytelling aspect of the Spanish Flu.

The book is readable. I learned a lot, and I am glad that I picked it up.

I recommend this book to anyone starting on the journey of understanding how pandemics take place, and for anyone who wants an understanding of how they can move to humans from animals.

One person found this helpful

Crawford Kilian

Pandemics, Politics, and the Spanish Flu

Reviewed in Canada on September 16, 2017

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This review was first published in The Tyee https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2017/09/15/Pandemics-Politics-Spanish-Flu/ on September 15, 2017:

“The Spanish flu,” Laura Spinney tells us, “infected one in three people on earth, or 500 million human beings. Between the first case recorded on 4 March 1918 and the last sometime in March 1920, it killed 50-100 million, or between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the global population — a range that reflects the uncertainty that still surrounds it. …It was the greatest tidal wave of death since the Black Death, perhaps in the whole of human history.”

Yet when it was over, a kind of stunned silence fell on the survivors. People might talk about the carnage of the First World War and the resulting revolutions, but not about the much greater slaughter they had personally witnessed in their own homes and workplaces. My own grandparents, who had small children in 1918 and ’19, never mentioned the flu pandemic.

Part of that silence is thanks to the human tendency to pay more attention to some deaths than to others. The 3,000 deaths in the 9/11 attack are trivial compared to the 64,000 drug-overdose deaths the U.S. suffered last year, or the 660,000 worldwide malaria deaths so far this year. The 9/11 deaths changed the world, while we shrug off far greater death tolls.

But the silence after the pandemic was also like many soldiers’ PTSD: the survivors didn’t much want to talk about an experience that seemed to have neither cause nor remedy.

Spinney, who is both a science writer and novelist, is far enough removed from the pandemic to gain perspective on it, and storyteller enough to condense a global disaster into a chain of vivid stories linked by lucid explanation. In the process, she evokes a world that seems both farther from us than a mere century, and also uncomfortably close.

Nobody knew anything
Nobody knew anything in 1918. The germ theory of disease, a few decades old, was as controversial then as climate change is now. “Virus” was a medical buzzword for “something we can’t see in a microscope that must be causing this or that disease.”

Even the word “influenza” was a hand-me-down from the Middle Ages, when the diagnosis for many ailments was the “influence” of the stars. The 19th century had seen many outbreaks of a respiratory disease called influenza, including the “Russian flu” of 1890 that had killed a million people. Less fatal flu outbreaks occurred yearly, as they continue to do.

So a wave of flu in the spring of 1918 didn’t stir much alarm though it killed more people and those of a younger age than usual — especially in the armies still locked in trench warfare. So many soldiers fell ill that a major German offensive — intended to knock France and Britain out of the war before the U.S. arrived — failed. Even though French and British soldiers were sick as well, they had the advantage of defence. (The Americans, meanwhile, were dying aboard their troop ships en route to the front.)

Most histories of the Spanish flu focus on events in Europe and the U.S., but Spinney’s scope is world-wide. Here is where her book distinguishes itself — by detailed scrutiny of the response to the pandemic in places like Brazil, China and India. All were baffled by the disease and by its seeming randomness. In the gold mines of South Africa’s Rand district, for example, black miners lived under crowded, unsanitary conditions that encouraged pneumonia. They fell ill with the flu, but most recovered. A week later, the flu hit Kimberley’s diamond mines — and the death rate was 35 times that of the gold miners.

Culture played a crucial role. In Spain, a charismatic bishop in the city of Zamora drew crowds into the churches to offer prayers to St. Rocco, the patron saint of plague, making the spread of flu much easier. The authorities tried to forbid mass gatherings; the bishop said they were interfering in church affairs.

Elsewhere, politics promoted the flu. In the Philippines, the Americans who’d occupied the islands 20 years before didn’t try to protect the local population except for a camp where Filipinos were training to join the U.S. war effort. Flu killed an estimated 80,000 Filipinos.

But the flu also promoted politics. After the Russian Revolution and civil war, Lenin brought in the first modern public healthcare system (at least for urban Russians). He asked doctors to make epidemic and famine prevention their top priority because flu and famine had nearly wiped out the Russian working classes.

Before that, however, flu had influenced not only the war but also the peace conference that followed. Woodrow Wilson almost certainly contracted Spanish flu en route to the Paris peace conference in 1919, and like many other cases, he suffered cognitive harm. His illness may also have helped cause the stroke he suffered a few months later; it left him crippled and unable to persuade Congress and the Senate to back the League of Nations.

In India, Mohandas Gandhi contracted flu. Already a leading figure in the struggle against British rule, Gandhi was temporarily unable to act as the epidemic aggravated a drought-related famine. But some of his followers began to build a grassroots organization to provide influenza relief — laying the groundwork for future liberation campaigns.

When Gandhi did recover, he was still too weak to control the response to a British bill that continued the rule of martial law in India after the end of the war. That bill, says Spinney, led to the Amritsar Massacre in April 1919, when brigadier general Reginald Dyer ordered his soldiers to fire into an unarmed crowd of protesters. Somewhere between 400 and 1,000 died. The slaughter was the beginning of the end of the British Raj.

The silence of the artists

If culture influenced influenza, influenza also influenced culture. Spinney explores the eerie silence about the pandemic in the work of 1920s writers. She argues that flu led to a general melancholy among artists, rather than works dramatizing its impact on individuals and communities.

From this she makes an interesting further case: We remember wars and then gradually forget them, while we forget pandemics and then gradually remember them. So, 72 years after the end of the Second World War, we contend with neo-Nazis while we also begin to sense what a shattering event the 1918-19 influenza pandemic really was.

A century later, we are far better equipped to deal with the next flu pandemic but also more vulnerable to it. The 2009-10 “swine flu” pandemic travelled at the speed of modern air travel; British schoolgirls brought it home from a holiday trip to Mexico. It killed over 200,000, a number too small to earn respect. In B.C., we had more than 1,000 cases and a mere 56 deaths — and promptly forgot them all.

The next influenza — whether H5N1, H7N9, or some other strain — could kill a magnitude more. As Santayana famously observed, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we can’t reconstruct our memories of the Spanish flu quickly enough, millions more will die in the next pandemic.

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