Pariah

I just finished reading this fantastic novel about a (healthy) town that quarantines itself from the 1918 influenza epidemic.

I'm posting this here because it deals with a lot of interesting historical issues including labor strife/violence, war dissension, socialism and suspension of rights in war-time.

It's very entertaining and thought-provoking. It'd be a great novel to study in H.S., IMO.

The Last Town on Earth, by Thomas Mullen (ASFN Amazon link)

ajcardfan

Thanks for the tip, I'll read the book.

The 1918 flu epidemic is also just a fascinating episode of American history. Over 600,000 Americans died of the flu in 8 months. If that happened today, it would kill 1.5 million, assuming the mortality rate of about 15% was the same (the bird flu is about 50%, hence the concern, if it can ever spread human-to-human).

Many of those "strange" laws on the books that people like to make fun of (like, "shaking hands in public" was illegal in Prescott, "spitting into the wind" was illegal in Michigan) came from the 1918 flu epidemic as an effort to stop the spread. Those laws were modeled from the European country best able to resist the flu, Italy. The Director of Health in Italy that developed those laws? ---- Benito Mussolini.

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We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.

T.H. Huxley

CardLogic

True story related to the 1918 influenza epidemic:

My grandfather had a job going around to the various homes with horse and wagon, picking up corpses.

He first met my grandmother when he went to her family's house to pick up her dead sister's body.

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"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-Samuel Langhorne Clemens