Pandemic 1918: The Story of the Deadliest Influenza in History - Couverture rigide

Arnold, Catharine

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1782438084 ISBN 13 : 9781782438083

Editeur : Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, 2018

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing an estimated 50 million people.

Germans soldiers termed it Blitzkatarrh, British soldiers called it Flanders Grippe, but globally the pandemic gained the notorious title of 'Spanish Flu'.

Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died in horrific conditions, the United States recorded 750,000 deaths, five times its total military fatalities in the war, while European deaths totalled over two million. Onset was sudden and indicated by horrific symptoms including haemorrhages from the lungs and nose, the skin turning blue from lack of oxygen and choking to death from 'air hunger' as the lungs filled with blood and pus. Those who never regained consciousness were the lucky ones; others died raving, lack of oxygen to the brain causing a form of dementia.

Those caught up in the epidemic included British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and writers Robert Graves and Vera Brittain. Alongside these richly distinctive characters appear brief glimpses of other lives: the army nurse who recalled the appalling stench of the sick and the dying. The young bride who was buried in the same church that she had been married in, just a week earlier. The little boy who recalled 'playing' on the pinewood coffins piled up outside the undertakers' store.

This important book, published 100 years after the most devastating pandemic in world history, uses previously unpublished records, memoirs, diaries and government publications to uncover the human story behind the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Biographie de l'auteur :

Catharine Arnold is the author of the much-acclaimed London quartet, a series about the dark side of the capital, consisting of Necropolis, London and its Dead, Bedlam, London and its Mad, City of Sin, London and its Vices and Underworld, London City of Crime and Punishment. Her first novel, Lost Time, won a Betty Trask Award. Catharine read English at the University of Cambridge and holds a further degree in psychology. She is a popular TV presenter and speaker on the history of London.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Michael O'Mara Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1782438084
• ISBN 13: 9781782438083
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 368