Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I

Abstract

Carol R. Byerly, Fever of War: The Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I , New York and London: New York University Press, 2005. Pp. 272. $21. ISBN 0814799248. The 1918 influenza epidemic that claimed between 40 and 50 million lives worldwide is no longer the forgotten pandemic that it was when Alfred Crosby's path-breaking study, Epidemic and Peace , appeared in 1976. Nonetheless, Carol R. Byerly demonstrates in this book that there are plenty of ways for innovative scholars to provide fresh observations on both the range and intensity of the epidemic. The author examines the impact of the 'flu on the American military during the First World War and in the process offers important insights into how the war both caused the epidemic and was in turn influenced by it. Byerly has undertaken an impressive amount of research into the attitudes of medical personnel, medical debates about the origins and diffusion of the 'flu virus, the experiences of afflicted soldiers, and the whitewashing of the war's official medical history. The post-war tendency of medical officers to pass quickly over the details of the wartime disease, Byerly argues, helped to erase it from the historical memory of the conflict. No one will any longer doubt the significance of the influenza epidemic for the American war effort after reading this book.