#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.

ジョン・M・バリーの本作は、単なる歴史記録を超え、科学と権力が衝突する人間ドラマを描き切った記念碑的傑作です。1918年の惨劇を、知の探求と政治の嘘という普遍的テーマへ昇華させた筆致は圧巻。未曾有の危機に抗う科学者たちの執念に、読み手は魂を揺さぶられるでしょう。 映像版ではパンデミックの視覚的恐怖が際立ちますが、原作は思考のプロセスを緻密に言語化し、活字ならではの重層的な深みをもたらします。真実を語ることの尊さを説く本書は、混乱の時代を生きる我々に、リーダーシップの本質を鋭く突きつける究極の知の武器です。