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OverviewBetween the years 1918 and1920, influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history, killing at least fifty million people, more than half a million of them Americans. Yet despite the devastation, this catastrophic event seems but a forgotten moment in the United States. American Pandemic offers a much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding the influenza outbreak. It sheds light on the social and cultural history of Americans during the pandemic, uncovering both the causes of the nation's public amnesia and the depth of the quiet remembering that endured. Focused on the primary players in this drama--patients and their families, friends, and community, public health experts, and health care professionals--historian Nancy K. Bristow draws on multiple perspectives to highlight the complex interplay between social identity, cultural norms, memory, and the epidemic. Bristow has combed a wealth of primary sources, including letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, novels, newspapers, magazines, photographs, government documents, and health care literature. She shows that though the pandemic caused massive disruption in the most basic patterns of American life, influenza did not create long-term social or cultural change, serving instead to reinforce the status quo and the differences and disparities that defined American life. As the crisis waned the pandemic slipped from the nation's public memory. The helplessness and despair Americans had suffered during the pandemic, Bristow notes, was a story poorly suited to a nation focused on optimism and progress. For countless survivors, though, the trauma never ended, shadowing the remainder of their lives with memories of loss. This book lets us hear these long-silent voices, reclaiming an important chapter in the American past. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Nancy Bristow (Professor of History, Professor of History, University of Puget Sound)Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc Dimensions: Width: 16.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.70cm Weight: 0.534kg ISBN: 9780199811342ISBN 10: 0199811342 Pages: 336 Publication Date: 30 April 2012 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsReviews<br> A richly detailed picture of American society as it experienced an extraordinary trauma -one that shook a newly-established confidence in the efficacy of medicine and the responsiveness of civil society. Doctors, nurses, the friends and families of the sick all play a part in this carefully and imaginatively researched and lucidly written account of America's last great epidemic. --Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University<p><br> Bristow has written a thoroughly researched and readable book documenting how different groups of Americans experienced and then remembered the influenza epidemic of 1918. Replete with large amounts of new information, this book is a major contribution to the historiography of both the flu and epidemic diseases more broadly. --Barron H. Lerner, author of The Breast Cancer Wars<p><br> A gifted story-teller, Bristow shows how the 1918 influenza pandemic affected Americans of all walks of life. American Pandemic is a masterful work of social and medical history Author InformationNancy K. Bristow is Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War. Bristow is the great-granddaughter of two of the pandemic's fatalities. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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