American Pandemic
The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
Nancy K. Bristow is Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.
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.
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.
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