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by: Alfred W. Crosby  List Price: $26.99 Amazon.com's Price: $24.29 You Save: $2.70 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 614.5180973 EAN: 9780521541756 Edition: 2nd ISBN: 0521541751 Label: Cambridge University Press Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: July 21, 2003 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Studio: Cambridge University Press Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives, more people than those perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event. In a new edition, with a new preface discussing the recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic, America's Forgotten Pandemic remains both prescient and relevant. Alfred W. Crosby is a Professor Emeritus in American Studies, History and Geography at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for over 20 years. His previous books include Throwing Fire (Cambrige, 2002), the Measure of Reality (Cambridge, 1997) and Ecological Imperialism (cambridge, 1986). Ecological Imperialism was the winner of the 1986 Phi Beta Kappa book prize. The Measure of Reality was chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of the 100 most important books of 1997. Book Description: Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives, more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event. In a new edition, with a new preface discussing the recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic, America's Forgotten Pandemic remains both prescient and relevant. Average Rating:
 Rating: - not as good as "The Great Influenza"Like another reviewer here, I'd say that unless you're looking for tables and statistics, you should get "The Great Influenza" by John Barry instead of this book. Also like that reviewer, this is not a knock on Crosby at all, but a tribute to Barry. Barry's book really is an incredible work by any standard. Compared to Crosby, it is simply richer and deeper, whether the 2 writers are addressing the same thing-- for example, both focused on Philadelphia, possibly the hardest hit city in the country ... Read More Rating:  - WHY FORGOTTEN?Crosby's classic account of this pandemic begins in the spring of 1918 with the virus just getting started in American military training camps. He then discusses how it devastated Philadelphia and San Francisco, contrasting the two cities handling of the crisis. The rest of the book looks at how the flu affected the US army in France and how it impacted the Paris peace conference. Toward the end we get a fascinating but grisly description of how Alaskan native towns were destroyed by the disease. ... Read More Rating: - Scholarly, yet easy to readThis book was written several decades back, yet is entirely relevant to today. The subject matter is the great flu pandemic of 1918 -- one of the worse mass die-offs in human history that somehow we seem to have collectively forgotten. Full of interesting statistics, the author describes the waves of the disease and the terrible mortality, especially among the young. I first heard of the pandemic many years ago when my great grandmother showed me family pictures. There was one particular picture, a beautiful ... Read More Rating: - America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918This book is well-researched, and has pulled together, in narrative and tabular form, the disparate data and details of the influenza pandemic of 1918. Although the timelines move back and forth through the narrative, the evolution of epidemiology and research chronicled in the book is fascinating. The hair-raising depiction of widespread illness and resulting deaths during the pandemic paint a far different picture than is discussed in epidemiology or history courses. Extrapolating events from 1918 (and other ... Read More Rating: - very good, but it has been overtaken by The Great InfluenzaWithout a doubt this is an excellent, provocative, and thoughtful book. In and of itself I'd give it 5 stars... But that would make it impossible to rate John Barry's The Great Influenza higher. Of course Barry's book came out 25 years after Crosby's, and to some extent is derivative. But it goes so far beyond Crosby, and adds so much context about scientists, the virus itself, and politics, there is unfortunately no reason to read Crosby any more. Actually that's wrong-- there is a reason. If you wnat tables and ... Read More 
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