The plague of the Spanish lady

"Little has been written to describe comprehensively the pandemic of influenza that slaughtered more than twenty-one million people between October 1918 and Junary 1919. Comparable in its ferocity only with the Black Death of the Middle Ages, the disease struck world-wide within a three month period, with such devastation that fit men could drop dead in the street without warning and the medical world came seriously to fear the end of civilisation. It was hard on Spain, where the disease first gained widespread publicity, that many nations would always hold them responsible for the pandemic. From Murom, Russia Pravda early reported "Ispanka (The Spanish lady) is in town" and for much of the world it was "The Spanish lady" until the very end. Here Collier sets out to present the pandemic in terms of human experience, based on the memories of more than seventeen hundred world survivors. For the first time we have not a medical textbook or the creation of a novelist, but the diverse reactions of ordinary citizens as the disease grew in intensity ... The immense task of presenting an event so horrific and world-wide in human terms has been overcome by a staggering feat of research and a gift for ordered narrative. The plague of the Spanish lady is not only ab extraordinary sotry, but a unique record of three crucial months in world history"--Dust jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.