Pale Rider

 

The Book List 1970 - 2020

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney, 2017

Read in April 2020

Finished this last night and there is nothing like reading about a pandemic while living through a pandemic. So 100 years later and it's painfully obvious there is still a lot to learn about living with pandemics.

This book was a fascinating account the so called Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 but it probably started on a farm in the American mid-west outside an army base training soldiers for the war. It was only called the Spanish Flu because that it where it was first reported from in the media at the time when most countries censored reports of an out of control disease on the front.

Overall is was an interesting discussion of the pandemic and it's impact across the globe compounded by an ongoing world war and also how it was downplayed by governments.

There also was an interesting anecdotal account of the immigrant grandfather of Donald Trump dying from the Spanish Flu in 1918 and the family took his life insurance money and invested it in some property which was the start of the family's real estate business. So what would have happened to Donald Trump if his grandfather hadn't died from a pandemic virus.