The much-anticipated sequel to The Last Kingdom starts at a gallop and never. ‘Weaves together global history and medical science to great effect. Written by Bernard Cornwell Review by Juliet Waldron. 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. 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. 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. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I. 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 twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. 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. Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World. Pale Rider is not just an excavation but a reimagining of the past' Guardian What the Spanish flu taught us, in essence, is that another flu pandemic is inevitable, but whether it kills 10 million or 100 million will be determined by the world into which it emerges. 'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story. Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer – and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Pale rider laura spinney sparknotes