American Pandemic

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.

Nancy K. Bristow is Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War. Bristow is the great-granddaughter of two of the pandemic's fatalities.

Acknowledgments ; Preface ; Chapter One: "Influenza has apparently become domesticated with us": Influenza, Medicine and the Public, 1890-1918 ; Chapter Two: "The whole world seems up-side-down": Patients, Families and Communities in the Epidemic ; Chapter Three: "Let our experience be of value to other communities": Public Health Experts and the Public ; Chapter Four: "The experience was one I shall never forget": Doctors, Nurses and the Challenges of the Epidemic ; Chapter Five: "The terrible and wonderful experience": Forgetting and Remembering in the Aftermath ; Epilogue: The Costs of Public Amnesia ; Abbreviations ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index