As the centenary of this monumental event approaches, other volumes on the pandemic will undoubtedly appear.

demonstrates how the Spanish flu cast a long shadow over the 20th century. Vividly recreated, grimly fascinating… Coolly, crisply and with a consistently sharp eye for the telling anecdote, Spinney. Yet most narratives focus on the West… Ms Spinney’s book goes some way to redress the balance. Laura Spinney traces its long shadow over human history… In Europe and North America the first world war killed more than Spanish flu everywhere else the reverse is true. Influenza, like all viruses, is a parasite. Weaves together global history and medical science to great effect. I’ve seldom had so much fun reading about people dying. With superb investigative skill and a delightfully light-hearted writing style, Spinney extends her analysis far beyond the relatively short duration of the plague. 'Weaves together global history and medical science to great effect. Laura Spinney demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant - if not more so - as two world wars in shaping the modern world in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts. She shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test. In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I.

With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. Pale Rider is not just an excavation but a reimagining of the past' Guardian 'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story. Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer - and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic. Tells the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer.

Laura spinney books