Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Laura Spinney (Author), Paul Hodgson (Narrator), Penguin Audio (Publisher)

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With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918–1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the 20th century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I.

In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain and from South Africa to Odessa. She shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered, and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test.

Laura Spinney demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant – if not more so – as two world wars in shaping the modern world, in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts.

Listening Length

10 hours and 4 minutes
Author

Laura Spinney
Narrator

Paul Hodgson
Audible release date

30 April 2020
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Audio
ASIN

B087QP4VCW
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	10 hours and 4 minutes
Author	Laura Spinney
Narrator	Paul Hodgson
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	30 April 2020
Publisher	Penguin Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B087QP4VCW
Best Sellers Rank	33,093 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 18 in Epidemiology (Books) 20 in Contagious Diseases 29 in Medicine History & Commentary

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1 star		1%

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Top review from Australia

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Kindle Customer

Disappointed.

Reviewed in Australia on 19 May 2020

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Was really looking forward to this book after hearing the author interviewed on ABC radio. Sadly I found the book nothing more than a mishmash of 3rd hand witness stories by people who lived through the pandemic. This would have been acceptable except that there was no real narrative linking the stories. The stories jumped from continent to continent with no apparent purpose or connection. Any science (and there was little enough of that) was presented at a grade school level. I expected better and was disappointed.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Autolycus

Can't recommend this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 July 2018

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Disappointing - jumped about a lot and contained a lot of anecdotal and irrelevant material. My wife's grandmother talked about people turning black and dying suddenly with Spanish Flu, and given the enormity of the pandemic, I though that here was an opportunity to understand more about it. I was therefore very disappointed to find virtually no medical explanations or precise statistics. There were passages where is was said 10 million people died in this country - but it might have been three times or even five times that - or it might have been less. It's hard to categorise the book - at best it was a light read, and it felt the equivalent of tabloid gossip in terms of sensationalist detail. It generally lacked cohesion, and if in my academic career it had been presented to me by an undergraduate as a first draft of a thesis, I would have been highly critical of it - it just lacked any degree of academic rigour. The subject is deserving of a more accomplished and detailed treatment.

94 people found this helpful

mariana

Pandemics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 March 2020

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I’ve only just got round to reading this after a house move and family illness and bereavement got in the way. It’s meticulously well researched and explains the scientific ideas that drove policy. It’s particularly pertinent today with the Covid-19 pandemic. A draconian response is needed but this book explains what happens with dithering and flouting of edicts. It does not linger on tales of Granny coughing up her lungs and the colour of her sputum. If that’s what you want watch a horror movie.

32 people found this helpful

Mark Pack

A great and highly accessible guide to one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 June 2020

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A virus spreading around the world, aided by international travel. Difficulties getting people to follow social distancing. Debates and disagreement over the health impact of wearing facemasks. Controversies over whether or not schools should be closed. Inadequate public health information for ethnic minority communities. The origins of Donald Trump's wealth.

No, this isn't a review of a book about 2020, it's a review of a book on the misnamed Spanish flu of the early twentieth century. Long treated as a historical quirk - that mostly forgotten thing which killed more people than the First World War - the global pandemic has become rather more newsworthy since we've faced a similar challenge a century on.

Many of the parallels between then and now are striking, though the one big difference - the huge advances in medical science and in public health expertise - make the outcome mercifully different.

Laura Spinney's Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World is a great and highly accessible guide to one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies.

It is not a detailed academic study. Statistics, for example, are frequently only mentioned in passing, with little detailed analysis presented to back them up or put them in context. The endnotes are fairly briefly for the amount of information presented in the book and there is no bibliography. That said, the book has a good reputation and it looks as if the evidence presented is robust; it's just presented in a popular style which means you often have to take that on trust. Rather than taking the form of an academic study, the book takes the form of a (very) long read piece of journalism, which makes sense as the author is a science journalist.

The sheer volume of information - and the size of the numbers involved - make the book a little overwhelming at times. It's easy to end up grazing through several pages without quite taking in what they really mean. But that's as much on the reader as the author.

Pale Rider ranges widely over history, with many digressions into earlier outbreaks and medical history. There are even a couple of paragraphs on how animals use social distancing from their brethren to protect against diseases

Read it and you'll also find out why 'the Spanish flu' got that inaccurate name.

19 people found this helpful

Mark Fitz

Spanish flu & its links to Donald Trump

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2019

Verified Purchase

After a recent bout of "manflu" I was interested to find out more of the disease. Like many others I'd heard of the Spanish flu pandemic, but hadn't too much knowledge of it's true scale, and the extent of it's reach.
This book provides great detail of the outbreak, and how it shaped world events. Without the outbreak, there would probably have been no President Trump. If you're interested in that point, I suggest you read this book
After my man flu, I got myself vaccinated. Yes, I know, horse & stable door!

13 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

The Tragedy of Spanish "Flu

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2018

Verified Purchase

Pale Rider is an excellent and readable account of the pandemic that swept the world in 1918 and caused the deaths of so many millions of people. From start to finish the book presents its arguments clearly and concisely and leaves the reader in no doubt of the great tragedy that was Spanish 'Flu. It also warns that there is another event due and perhaps we are just about as unprepared for it as was the global population in 1918.

26 people found this helpful

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Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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