Full title: Get Well Soon; History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
This fascinating account
of various plagues through history features plenty of heroes to
counter the darkness. Jennifer Wright has a conversational style
with plenty of clever humor that somehow doesn’t make light of the
real suffering and death caused by these diseases. I found it very
entertaining and educational, and more of a page-turner than the
novel I was reading concurrently.
Okay, so it does get a
little preachy in places, but I agree with the lessons we can learn
from history.
Some of the stuff the
author wrote about is so scary, especially about the American morale
laws in WWI that pretty much threw away any semblance of free speech,
punished journalists with 20 years of jail time for telling the
truth, and inadvertently exacerbated the Spanish influenza. It made
me wonder about the truth of it and other details in the book,
despite the good footnotes. My preliminary search of the internet
has yielded surprisingly little detail of the terrifying
ramifications of the Espionage and Sedition acts of 1917 and 1918 or
their connection with the spread of the Spanish influenza by means of
blatant, criminal denial. Considering that the internet is full of
passionate details about the terrifying ramifications of things like
vaccines and celebrities’ divorces and leaving onions in your
fridge overnight, this internet silence is extremely disturbing. If
this book’s allegations are true, then these laws and the
subsequent behavior of the people, the press, and the justice
department are just as scary as the bubonic plague or the Spanish
influenza itself.
Anyway, a very, very
interesting book. Now I need to read Jennifer Wright’s other book,
“It Ended Badly,” about famous historical break-ups. She brings
history to life and delivers it in small chunks that anyone would
have time for.
Highly recommended (though
perhaps not for hypochondriacs or the squeamish).
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