On the centennial of a global influenza pandemic that infected 500 million people and killed up to 100 million of them, Jeremy Brown, a former ER doctor who is now a director at the National Institutes of Health, has written Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History. It is an accessible, straightforward and often riveting history of this seasonal menace and the many thwarted attempts to defeat it.
Brown wrote this book because he believes that, despite this century's great advances in science and medicine, the world has not effectively learned from the so-called "Spanish flu." The 2017 flu season was the deadliest in decades. "Because of its mystery, and its ability to mutate and spread, the flu is one of mankind's most dangerous foes," Brown writes.
But Influenza isn't all alarmist gloom. In fact, it's brisk, entertaining and written with an endearing zeal. Brown weaves the history and context of the 1918 pandemic into the more contemporary story of how teams of adventurous scientists "resurrected" that year's deadly strain and studied it. He then discusses the complicated development, politics and business of weapons against the flu: vaccines (only partially effective at best) and Tamiflu (as it turns out, not effective at all).
Brown concludes with an elegant memorial to the flu pandemic of 1918 in order to more clearly define it in our collective consciousness. He argues that this century has been one of catastrophe and strife, but also one of mass expansion, technological breakthroughs and medical victories--and "the flu pandemic," he writes, "tells both these stories." --Hannah Calkins, writer and editor in Washington, D.C.