Gina Kolata's 'Flu'

I recently and finally finished reading a book by Gina Kolata about the 1918 Flu; despite the dry-sounding topic, it's really quite fascinating.

Odd choice of recreational reading? I think it was something that grew out of reading "The Canterbury Tales," actually. Craig Rustici, our Chaucer professor, explained that England in Chaucer's day was experiencing massive social upheaval owing to the new upward mobility experienced by laborers, whose skills suddenly were in demand, owing to the effects of bubonic plague.

A disease that made its way from China to Europe along trade routes was a major contributor to the end of the Dark Ages, along with more conventional means of social change such as shifting philosophies and wars.

So while my interest is definitely a layman's -- I can't begin to tell you the molecular biology at play in chickenpox, let alone in plague -- I can't help but find massive outbreaks of disease interesting because of their social consequences.

In the case of the 1918 flu, it led to an entire generation overdosing themselves and their children on antibiotics, affected commerce and transit, as people avoided large crowds, where the risk of exposure to the killer flu was increased. Decades later the memory of the 1918 flu was enough to spur the Ford presidency into trying to vaccinate the entire country, to stave off a feared return of that flu strain.

Kolata's been reviled by those covering the newspaper industry and science reporting for her bias and inaccuracies in her reporting, and perhaps deservedly so; but she writes engagingly and captures the personalities of the people she's writing about in this book. I have another book of hers here about the events leading up to the cloned sheep Dolly, but haven't read it yet.

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My current read is "Wicked," the book the musical is based on. Simply incredible, though I think Maguire loses steam in a few places and Natasha found the ending dissatisfying. Probably the main appeal to his work is that he gives such a perverse rendering of "Wizard of Oz" that it can't help but appeal to any adult who remembers enjoying either the movie or Baum's book as a child. Elphaba (the wicked witch) is interesting and sympathetically portrayed although she is, ultimately, arguably as wicked as the title claims.

And we're also reading Evangeline "The Wizard of Oz," which is rather interesting because I had never read it growing up, and am reading Maguire's treatment at the same time, and am finding it colors my view of Dorothy's experiences. (The wizard is a total despot, for starters, as bad as Hitler or other fascists who sponsor genocide and abuse their power for personal gain. I actually told Evangeline that I think the wizard is an evil man, which she took as me being silly, which I suppose I was.)

So far I recommend it.