Very, Very, Very Dreadful
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918
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Narrated by:
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Jim Frangione
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By:
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Albert Marrin
About this listen
From National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin comes a fascinating look at the history and science of the deadly 1918 flu pandemic - and its chilling and timely resemblance to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak.
In spring of 1918, World War I was underway, and troops at Fort Riley, Kansas, found themselves felled by influenza. By the summer of 1918, the second wave struck as a highly contagious and lethal epidemic and within weeks exploded into a pandemic, an illness that travels rapidly from one continent to another. It would impact the course of the war, and kill many millions more soldiers than warfare itself.
Of all diseases, the 1918 flu was by far the worst that has ever afflicted humankind; not even the Black Death of the Middle Ages comes close in terms of the number of lives it took. No war, no natural disaster, no famine has claimed so many. In the space of 18 months in 1918-1919, about 500 million people - one-third of the global population at the time - came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known, but the best estimate is between 50 and 100 million.
In this powerful book, nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines the history, science, and impact of this great scourge - and the possibility for another worldwide pandemic today.
A Chicago Public Library best book of the year!
©2018 Albert Marrin (P)2018 Listening LibraryListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?
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Solid but not amazing account of malaria
- By S. Yates on 04-11-16
By: Sonia Shah
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Get Well Soon
- History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn't stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon 34 more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-19th-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome - a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure.
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Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-09-17
By: Jennifer Wright
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The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl
- How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis
- By: Arthur Allen
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed - refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples - causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.
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An Unforgettable book
- By Jean on 09-01-14
By: Arthur Allen
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The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine
- A History
- By: Thomas Helling MD
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Great War of 1914-1918 burst on the European scene with a brutality to mankind not yet witnessed by the civilized world. Modern warfare was no longer the stuff of chivalry and honor; it was a mutilative, deadly, and humbling exercise to wipe out the very presence of humanity. Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of maimed, beaten, and bleeding men surged into aid stations and hospitals with injuries unimaginable in their scope and destruction. Doctors scrambled to find some way to salvage not only life but limb.
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Interesting but weirdly sexist?
- By J-Murphy on 07-19-22
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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Pandemic
- Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Sonia Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between the story of cholera - one of history's most disruptive and deadly pathogens - and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today, from Ebola and avian influenza to drug-resistant superbugs.
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You will probably enjoy "Spillover" more
- By serine on 03-01-16
By: Sonia Shah
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Asleep
- The Forgotten Epidemic That Became Medicine’s Greatest Mystery
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.
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Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery
- By joyce on 12-14-14
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The Demon Under The Microscope
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. This incredible discovery was sulfa, the first antibiotic medication. In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of the drug that shaped modern medicine.
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Great Book!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
By: Thomas Hager
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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An American Plague
- The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
- By: Jim Murphy
- Narrated by: Pat Bottino
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In An American Plague, Jim Murphy tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Bizarre medical practices of the time are discussed, as well as popular historical figures, such as George Washington and Benjamin Rush, who were involved in finding a cure for this horrific outbreak. Pat Bottino's captivating narration adds appeal to this interesting historical tale.
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Don't expect technical depth...
- By Ebird on 01-27-06
By: Jim Murphy
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Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses
- From the Plague of Athens to COVID-19
- By: Heather E. Quinlan
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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It can come in waves - like tidal waves. It changes societies. It disrupts life. It ends lives. As far back as 3000 B.C.E. (the Bronze Age), plagues have stricken mankind. COVID-19 is just the latest example, but history shows that life continues. It shows that knowledge and social cooperation can save lives. Viruses are neither alive nor dead and are the closest thing we have to zombies. Their only known function is to replicate themselves, which can have devastating consequences on their hosts.
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Somewhat elemental
- By Bertha Watkins on 10-23-21
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The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- A Medical Mystery
- By: D.T. Max
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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For 200 years, a noble Venetian family has suffered from an inherited disease that strikes their members in middle age, stealing their sleep, eating holes in their brains, and ending their lives in a matter of months. In Papua New Guinea, a primitive tribe is nearly obliterated by a sickness whose chief symptom is uncontrollable laughter. Across Europe, millions of sheep rub their fleeces raw before collapsing. What these strange conditions share is their cause: prions.
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A great scientific mystery
- By David on 11-04-06
By: D.T. Max
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The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
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The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World's Deadliest Influenza Outbreak
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1918, the world was still in the throes of the Great War, the deadliest conflict in human history at that point, but while World War I would be a catastrophic war surpassed only by World War II, an unprecedented influenza outbreak that same year inflicted casualties that would make both wars pale in comparison.
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Complacency can kill
- By MolllyT on 12-10-16
What listeners say about Very, Very, Very Dreadful
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Warren
- 01-31-18
The Spanish Flu for the common man.
This is gripping backstory to our modern fear of the flu.: Well written and well performed. I felt the gritty horror of WW I that was the pallet on which the Devil Virus painted the macabre tableau of mass death by disease. The science behind is laid bare using common words, skipping the medical jargon. The plot portrays your friends and your family stricken by invisible death in your own home town.
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4 people found this helpful
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- C. Hartmann
- 04-11-20
A MUST read
This is a must read for a scientific, political and human story of how a pandemic occurs, how people respond and (most importantly) what is not known in the 'fog of war' that surrounds being in the grips of one. In a class with "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for the stunning facts we all probably should have known. A tremendous listen !!
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6 people found this helpful
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- anthony
- 03-20-20
listened to this book because of coronavirus
found it insightful and helpful on things that may or not come and on what should be done during this time
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3 people found this helpful
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- Lulu
- 04-22-18
Very, Very, Very Frightening
I've read books and seen documentaries in the past about the Influenza Pandemic and always found it fascinating. For some reason, I was in the mood to read more about the subject and this book showed up on Audible as a new release. I like the narrator, Jim Frangione, so I purchased without reading the description in detail.
The book started off well but seemed a little simplistic in its explanation of early humans. It became more detailed and specific in the discussion of virus and bacteria but still read like it was written for someone who'd never heard the words before. The same was true about his explanation of World War One. This made me wonder about the author, led me back to the book description in Audible and that is when I noticed the book was written for 11 to 14-year-olds. Explained a lot.
It was interesting enough I decided to keep reading and once he started relaying the specifics of this pandemic, where it started, how it spread, how awful contracting the disease was, including personal comments from survivors, family members of those who died, the doctors and nurses who tried to help, the book really picked up. He included extremely graphic and disturbing descriptions of exactly how this flu attacked the body and ultimately killed a person. Far more so than I had read in books written for adults. Gory, but educational. He also touched on how the pandemic affected the war, ultimately becoming a deciding factor, how it was treated and interpreted in countries across the world, not just in North America and Europe, which was very interesting. And most fascinating to me every time I read about it - how it traveled from country to country, continent to continent.
He ended with a discussion about what researchers have done in the last 100 years to learn more about this specific virus, what world organizations are involved in the process and how they have used their research to try and minimize flu epidemics we see now. He compared it to more recent viruses such as Bird Flu and finally discussed attempts to recreate a super virus in the lab and how controversial and dangerous that was.
My main takeaway was that I was a child of the Cold War. I remember fallout shelters and emergency preparedness drills. But I don't think teachers or parents ever told me in minute detail about the physical effects of radiation poisoning, how it would attack the body, how painful it would be or the true devastation of a nuclear war. I did not grasp how terrible the consequences would be or how close we came to suffering them. If they had, I can't imagine how scared I would have been.
If I was an 11 to 14-year-old reading this book about the horrors of this flu pandemic, the threat, and chances of another pandemic and the fact that we were creating super viruses in labs that were capable of as much devastation, if not more so, I don't think I would sleep at night for months.
11 to 14-year-olds today must be a lot more inured to violent and painful attacks on humans than I was. This book seemed awfully graphic to me for that audience.
On the other hand, if an adult knows little about this pandemic and wants a brief but substantial overview, this would be a good place to start.
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27 people found this helpful
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- Amjad Idries
- 09-26-18
cool
I am specialist in the field, and I like it. good narrative and clear target audience
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4 people found this helpful
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- Dr. Joe de Beauchamp
- 03-28-20
Documentary
A complete summary of deadly flu pandemics world-wide. This is especially important today with Covid-19 running around the earth.
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5 people found this helpful
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- scott
- 04-28-20
Dr Marin is the best.
Was a student of dr Marin back in 90s. His classes at Yeshiva were fascinating. Always to the point just like his books. Never boring. Book and reader 5 stars.
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2 people found this helpful
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- J. Leuthard
- 04-18-20
Excellent Description of the Spanish Flu
Good, short history of this pandemic. Very appropriate for us all during thid time with COVID-19.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jennifer Camp
- 07-19-21
More than I expected
I love how this book looks at the big picture, actually discussing modern day H1N1, and the current Flu risks.
I’ve read several books about the 1918 flu, which I’ve found fascinating for years. What I enjoyed in Marrin’s book is that a much broader picture is explored- the War, how the rest of the world was impacted, etc. it’s a through and well told story.
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- Lynn Ü.
- 06-29-22
An interesting book.
I really enjoyed this book despite it's sad topic. I found it easy to listen to; it stated hundreds of facts in a coherent manner.
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