Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney

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I read The Great Influenza a few months ago after coming across it. I think I would have read it regardless of the current pandemic as I still believe my knowledge of the world in the WWI era to be lacking. The Great Influenza focuses on the Spanish Flu and its impact in the United States. It also details the history of medicine and virology, specifically as it pertains to the flu. The book is long and comprehensive but I really enjoyed it.  It really […]

One for the times

Pale Rider by Laura Spinney

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In some very serendipitous timing, we ordered this book back in the fall, shortly before coronavirus made the news out of China.  Spinney’s history of the 1918 flu pandemic has become so very relevant, and luckily this history is also very readable- she is a science journalist, so has lots of practice translating science jargon and telling non-fiction stories.  The book is split into a number of sections with different focuses: the world that that flu emerged into (religious, superstitious, viruses as yet undiscovered, teeming […]

These First Few Desperate Hours

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It’s 1918, and the mill town of Commonwealth has shut itself off from the world as Spanish flu spreads. Armed men guard the town day and night to keep outsiders who may be contagious away. When two soldiers from a nearby base try to come in, all hell breaks loose. The main character is a teenage boy named Phillip, son of the town founder, and unable to enlist because of a leg injury. Phillip is on guard duty with his friend Graham when the first soldier arrives, […]



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