PublicAffairs
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
Key Metrics
- Laura Spinney
- PublicAffairs
- Paperback
- 9781541736122
- 8.2 X 5.4 X 1 inches
- 0.65 pounds
- History > Modern - 20th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth -- from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I.
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted -- and often permanently altered -- global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also created the true lost generation. Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity.
Author Bio
Laura Spinney is an author and science journalist. She has published two novels in English, The Doctor (Methuen, 2001) and The Quick (Fourth Estate, 2007). Her third book of non-fiction, Rue Centrale, came out in 2013 from Editions L’Age d’Homme (in French and in English), and her fourth, a tale of the Spanish flu called Pale Rider, was published by Jonathan Cape in June 2017. Derborence: Where the devils came down, her translation of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz’s best-loved novel, was published by Skomlin (formerly Onesuch) Press in 2018.
Her literary agent is Natasha Fairweather of Rogers, Coleridge & White in London. She also writes on science for National Geographic, The Economist, Nature, New Scientist and The Telegraph among others.
She lives in Paris.
Source: lauraspinney.com
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