The Great Influenza
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (originally subtitled The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History) is a 2004 nonfiction book by John M. Barry that examines the 1918 flu pandemic, one of the worst pandemics in history. Barry focuses on what was occurring in the United States at the time and attempts to place it against the background of American history and within the context of the history of medicine. The book describes how the flu started in Haskell County, Kansas, USA, and spread to the U.S. Army training camp  Camp Funston, Kansas, USA, and around the world through troop movements during World War I. Background Information. The 1918 influenza pandemic has been declared, according to Barry's text, as the 'deadliest plague in history'. The extensiveness of this declaration can be supported through the following statements: "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and "the pandemic ranks with the plague of Justinian and the Black Death as one of the three most destructive human epidemics". Although the origin site for the pandemic has been widely debated, Barry follows the research findings of epidemiologist Edwin Oakes Jordan to claim that the  disease originated from Haskell County, Kansas and was spread to army camps, across the US and then to Europe. Reviews. A 2004 "Journal of Clinical Investigation" review said that the book was "well conceived, well researched, and extremely well written" targeting a broad audience-physicians, scientists, medical students, and history buffs. Barry Gewen of "The New York Times" praised it saying "He is a good teacher, in part because he assumes that his readers don't know anything. He explains the technical stuff clearly, with nice, homey analogies". Reaction. In the summer of 2005, then-President George W. Bush read  the book while on vacation at his ranch in Crawford. His study would later set forth plans for the federal government to prepare for future pandemics in a November 2005 speech. In 2020, the book experienced a surge in popularity as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.