Authors:
Niall Johnson, George Dehner
The genre of general or popular histories of disease is a well-established one. However, it has tended to focus on the high mortality rate terrors of bubonic plague, small pox, Ebola, HIV/AIDS and other terrifying scourges that scarify literally and/or metaphorically. Influenza has only intermittently figured, its low profile mirroring its tendency for low rates of mortality even in epidemic and pandemic form allied with its quotidian familiarity and ubiquity. This work belongs in the same lineage of the ‘popular’ large-scale synthesising histories, such as those of Jared Diamond or Al Crosby, but without Diamond's hyperbole or Crosby's style.
The perceived market for books on influenza, particularly on a broad scale and for the non-specialist audience, has waxed and waned in recent years with the emergence of episodes such as H5N1 ‘bird’ flu, SARS and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. This work has largely emerged from the latter—an influenza pandemic that proved somewhat lacking in virulence and the disastrous potential that had been depicted as possible for an influenza pandemic. It is arguable that the time and effort spent in preparation and prevention had an ameliorative effect that is not fully appreciated. It is to be hoped that the relative mildness of the 2009 pandemic does not engender complacency when the next pandemic emerges.