More Deadly Than War : The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War

YA Nonfiction

VG/A. Davis, Kenneth C. More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War. Henry Holt and Company, 2018. 291p. 978-1-250-14512-3. 19.95.

“We live in a world in which we fear the deadly things we can see. Bombs, guns, and terrorism are the most visible threats to life and peace…But throughout human history, the things we cannot see have actually been the most lethal. Disease have been more deadly than war.” Davis’s fascinating and engrossing account comes on the 100^th anniversary of the Spanish flu, the most deadly pandemic in the modern era. It has recently been estimated that 100 million people died worldwide, of which 675,000 died in the US.  However, little attention has been paid to the Spanish flu that left victims, otherwise young and healthy, “blue as huckleberries and spitting blood”.  A “collective amnesia”, the censorship of newspapers, magazines and textbooks surrounding the Spanish flu and its effects on WWI, has allowed it to fall into “a black hole of history”.  The history of the Spanish flu is a cautionary tale, in which lessons of the past are still relevant today, especially in a world more interconnected than ever before, where outbreaks of Zika or Ebola or even the flu can lead to another deadly and terrifying pandemic. Includes black and white photographs, appendices, timeline, bibliography, source, notes, and index. Recommended for all general YA collections.

C. Campos, Benjamin Franklin Library, LAPL