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Jul. 2nd, 2012 10:26 amSometimes I read a book and I'm like "that book was super informative! That . . . is not actually the information I was looking for. Better prose would have been helpful."
That is how it went for me with The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. What I wanted: a social and cultural history of the Spanish flu and how different areas of the world coped with the pandemic! What I got: a book about the development of American medical science as focused through the lens of their efforts to create a vaccine of the Spanish flu, with a discussion of the pandemic thrown in there for context.
And that is perfectly fine, and was in fact very informative -- there was some really good information about hospital and bureaucratic infrastructure and their completely overwhelmed attempts to cope in the face of a huge and terrifying epidemic, and that is exactly what I wanted. The fact that I was not particularly looking for information about the development of American experimental science at this particular moment is not The Great Influenza's fault. Nor is it The Great Influenza's fault that it was focused almost entirely on the U.S. and I wanted a global history, although in that case it might have wanted to advertise itself as something a little different than 'the story of the greatest pandemic in history,' since 'global' is, you know, what pandemic actually means.
What is actually The Great Influenza's fault: the fact that it would be really, really easy to get dangerously trashed by taking a shot every time the author used his portentous-and-sinister catchphrase that "this was influenza, only influenza." IT'S OKAY, JOHN M. BARRY. IT WAS THE FLU. WE GET IT.
That is how it went for me with The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. What I wanted: a social and cultural history of the Spanish flu and how different areas of the world coped with the pandemic! What I got: a book about the development of American medical science as focused through the lens of their efforts to create a vaccine of the Spanish flu, with a discussion of the pandemic thrown in there for context.
And that is perfectly fine, and was in fact very informative -- there was some really good information about hospital and bureaucratic infrastructure and their completely overwhelmed attempts to cope in the face of a huge and terrifying epidemic, and that is exactly what I wanted. The fact that I was not particularly looking for information about the development of American experimental science at this particular moment is not The Great Influenza's fault. Nor is it The Great Influenza's fault that it was focused almost entirely on the U.S. and I wanted a global history, although in that case it might have wanted to advertise itself as something a little different than 'the story of the greatest pandemic in history,' since 'global' is, you know, what pandemic actually means.
What is actually The Great Influenza's fault: the fact that it would be really, really easy to get dangerously trashed by taking a shot every time the author used his portentous-and-sinister catchphrase that "this was influenza, only influenza." IT'S OKAY, JOHN M. BARRY. IT WAS THE FLU. WE GET IT.
