The Great Influenza

"The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History" by John M. Barry (2004)

"It's only influenza" is a line oft-repeated in the book about the 1918 Pandemic that decimated millions.
Served as a microbiology review for me. Remember Koch's postulates? Antigen shift and drift?
Others may like the "CSI" stuff in the book: how the virus kills, oozing blood, cyanotic bodies. More fascinating to me were the historical accounts of the inceptions of "The Hopkins" and Rockefeller Institute, the images of old New York (blood-letting horses in 68th and York!), and nurses being kidnapped in order to take care of sick patients.
Where the world went wrong was fear (misinformation or lack thereof) and poor infrastructure for managing an epidemic.
And we haven't come that far. We are still woefully unprepared.
Reminds me of that time in Micro when a classmate turned to me and said, "It's a scary time to be a nurse. We have these new diseases. SARS. Bird Flu."
That's why I don't work in the E.R.