Pale rider: the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how it changed the world, by Laura Spinney

I read Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale horse, pale rider, a fictional account of her own near-death from influenza, when I was a teenager.  Since then, I have often wondered why the influenza epidemic of 1918 is barely represented in other literary and artistic creations.  Sweeping around the globe in about a year – and carried back and forth on troop ships towards the end of WWI – it infected one in three people on earth and killed 50 – 100 million people, or 2.5 – 5 % of the population.  World War I “only” killed 20 million soldiers and civilians.  How can this have gone so unnoticed in works of art and the historical document?  This is just one of the many topics that the author takes up in this fascinating and timely book.  Our current flu season is in progress and the flu shot is at most 30% effective on this outbreak of the H3N2 version of the virus, Spinney’s book explains the facts and theories behind how flu viruses mutate and spread, how animal reservoirs of the disease affect human disease, and why different flu seasons seem to disproportionally affect different age groups (it seems that you are most immune to the first flu type you are exposed to regardless of future experiences with the illness, and therefore will always be more resistant to whatever virus your age cohort first ran into).  She points out at the beginning of the book, “When asked what was the biggest disaster of the twentieth century, nobody answers the Spanish flu…. There is no cenotaph, no monument in London, Moscow or Washington DC.  The Spanish flu is remembered personally, not collectively.  Not as a historical disaster, but as millions of discrete, private tragedies.”  Well-written as well as informative – recommended.  295 pp.