American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic [Kindle Edition] Author: Nancy K. Bristow | Language: English | ISBN:
B007NVLASA | Format: PDF, EPUB
American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
Direct download links available American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic for everyone book with Mediafire Link Download Link Between the years 1918 and1920, influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history, killing at least fifty million people, more than half a million of them Americans. Yet despite the devastation, this catastrophic event seems but a forgotten moment in the United States.
American Pandemic offers a much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding the influenza outbreak. It sheds light on the social and cultural history of Americans during the pandemic, uncovering both the causes of the nation's public amnesia and the depth of the quiet remembering that endured. Focused on the primary players in this drama--patients and their families, friends, and community, public health experts, and health care professionals--historian Nancy K. Bristow draws on multiple perspectives to highlight the complex interplay between social identity, cultural norms, memory, and the epidemic. Bristow has combed a wealth of primary sources, including letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, novels, newspapers, magazines, photographs, government documents, and health care literature. She shows that though the pandemic caused massive disruption in the most basic patterns of American life, influenza did not create long-term social or cultural change, serving instead to reinforce the status quo and the differences and disparities that defined American life.
As the crisis waned the pandemic slipped from the nation's public memory. The helplessness and despair Americans had suffered during the pandemic, Bristow notes, was a story poorly suited to a nation focused on optimism and progress. For countless survivors, though, the trauma never ended, shadowing the remainder of their lives with memories of loss. This book lets us hear these long-silent voices, reclaiming an important chapter in the American past. Books with free ebook downloads available American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
- File Size: 1386 KB
- Print Length: 295 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0199811342
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 29, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007NVLASA
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,087 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #86 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Specialties > Pathology > Forensic Medicine
The Library Journal said that American Pandemic is "Recommended especially for academic readers and specialists". I would recommend it primarily for those readers. This is not a comprehensive history of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (though that is not what it is aiming for), but it is also not a real page-turner. It is a fairly academic history documenting the experiences of various groups of that time-almost exclusively healthcare professionals. There is surprisingly little space given to the firsthand experiences of the sick, despite how many mentions are made of the sufferings of working class and immigrant families, as observed by the nurses who cared for them. One of the few passages that addresses this is a drawn-out section which retells a work of fiction written by a survivor. This seemed an odd source of information after how many diaries, letters, newspaper articles, public notices and so forth were extensively included to show the experiences of doctors, nurses and health board members. There is some great insight contained in this book, most of all how differently nurses experienced the crisis in comparison to how doctors did, but I would read this as a supplement to other works on the period.
By Jonathan W. Curtis
This book attempts to tell the "lost" story of the Influenza Pandemic but falls far short. The story tells of the attempt to combat the pandemic but it never raises to the level of compelling story telling. It seems to be much more interested in how the bureaucracies responded to the flu. While it touches briefly on the person it never crosses the threshold into becoming compelling reading.
All in all this is a book well worth your time,,,,to avoid.
By R. C Sheehy
American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic Download
Please Wait...