Historian John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, has taught us a lot over the past two years as we have tried to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context...
COVID-19 is now the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history. Here is Elizabeth Gamillo at Smithsonian Magazine: The coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest disease outbreak in recent American history with tolls surpassing the estimated deaths of the 1918 flu. According to...
E. Thomas Ewing of Virginia Tech, a historian of epidemics, offers some historical context. Here is a taste of his piece at The Washington Post: Finally, vaccines are not a magic bullet that will single-handedly end an epidemic. In 1918, […]
From the San Francisco Examiner, February 1, 1919:...
From the Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, October 14, 1918:...
From the Bakersfield Morning Echo, November 21, 1918 ...
From the Long Beach Telegram, January 21, 1919: ...
From the November 5, 1918 edition of the Calgary Herald:...
From the November 5, 1918 edition of the Stockton Daily Evening Record:...
It comes from the January 27, 1919 edition of The Sacramento Bee:...
Check out Ned Barnett’s Raleigh News Observer story on the 1918 pandemic in North Carolina based on his interview with Chapel Hill professor James Leloudis. A taste: The 1918 pandemic came through North Carolina in three waves: a small one...
This video is now up on YouTube: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzqiWtPlEdY&w=560&h=315]...
How should the 1918 influenza pandemic inform our response to COVID-19? Here is a taste of Kevin Peraino’s piece at Politico: So what is history for? Yes, it can reinforce one’s pet theories. But there’s another way to think about it:...
His name was Frederick Trump. He died in the first wave of deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Mary Pilon’s report at The New York Times includes interviews with historians and authors Nancy Bristow, Gwenda Blair, and James Harris. Here is a...
Here is an October 17, 1918 letter from E.F. Hoban, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago (on behalf of Cardinal, Archbishop George William Mundelein), to the pastors of all the Catholic churches in the archdiocese. All evening services are suspended....
Mark Honigsbaum is a medical historian and lecturer in journalism at the City University, London. His is the author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris. Check out his piece at The New York Review of...
One of the first things I ever published was a journal article on evangelist Billy Sunday’s 1918 crusade in Chicago. The title played-off a line from a popular Frank Sinatra song about Chicago: “The Town That Billy Sunday Could Not...
Francis J. Grimké (1850-1937) pastored the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., an African-American congregation, for nearly fifty years. He was an active member of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Niagara Movement and was involved in the founding of the National...
I have been trying to read more about pandemics in the United States so that I can share some good history with my readers here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. On Saturday night, I read Nancy Bristow‘s fascinating...
