Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World

The haunting story of a virus that triggered the worst pandemic of modern times

“Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story.” —The Guardian

The flu pandemic of 1918–1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth—from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi, and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll far higher than that of World War I, the 1918 flu is little more than a historical a...