Flu by Gina Kolata

This book is probably one of THE most interesting books I have read in all my life. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused it by Gina Kolata, published in 1999, is a book about the, as the title states, great influenza pandemic that completely took over then entire world. The purpose of this book, at least in my opinion, is the informing and the discovering of the era of which this variant of the generic influenza, or flu, had taken the world under siege.  The quote from the book that really had me going in and reading was,

"If such a plague came today. killing a similar fraction of the U.S. population, 1.5 million Americans would die, which is more than the number felled in a single year by heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS, and Alzheimer's disease combined."

The way it is presented is unreasonably critical to the book. It states in the most clear and precise way how deadly the that version of influenza was to the entire world, which implies that it wasn't just the U.S. that suffered.  Many people retained the illness from taking a German-made aspirin made by the German company "Bayer." Other people contracted the disease through general means: touching, breathing the air around the diseased, and sometimes by even soldiers who came back abroad who also contracted the disease themselves.

The words that had me interested in what the book had to offer were epidemic, delirium, plagues, traumatized, and deathwatch. According to the book, this variant of the usual influenza had many other names, such as "Flanders Fever" by the Germans for the initial symptom of the disease, "three-day fever" as Asia called it, and "Spanish Flu" from where the disease is rumored, at least in the book, to be originated from.

Just from the first chapter, and me wishing to be a medical professional, my take on the book is that it is one of the best medically related books I have read in my entire life. The information provided by this book is a treasure and I absolutely love the way it is presented. The book had me wanting to read more and more and I  am just jittery to read more about the history of the disease.