With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918–1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I.

In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. Telling the story from the point of view of those who lived through it, she shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered; and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test.

Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology, and economics, Laura Spinney narrates a catastrophe that changed humanity for decades to come, and continues to make itself felt today. In the process she demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant – if not more so – as two world wars in shaping the modern world; in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts.

Available on Amazon UK and Amazon US and in all good bookshops…

 

 

“Magisterial”

—Observer

“[Spinney knows] just which medical mysteries and haunting vignettes will give the pandemic full purchase on our imaginations.”

—New York Times

“Riveting”

—Sunday Times

“A book about the Spanish flu could so easily be dreary… Not so Pale Rider. I’ve seldom had so much fun reading about people dying.”

—Times

“Coolly, crisply and with a consistently sharp eye for the telling anecdote, Spinney… demonstrates how Spanish flu cast a long, dark shadow over the twentieth century.”

—Daily Mail

Palmarès – Les livres de l’année 2018 selon le magazine Lire