Catching Cold: 1918'S Forgotten Tragedy And the Scientific Hunt For the Virus That Caused IT - Hardcover

In 1918 flu killed up to forty million people worldwide. It killed more Americans than all the wars that country's fought this century. Tram cars were used as mortuaries to cope with the dead. Early in 1998, a boy's death in Hong Kong led directly to the slaughter of over a million chickens and to letters being sent to retired doctors in the UK in case their help should be needed in an epidemic. In August 1998, scientists exhumed six bodies on a remote Norwegian island. There's a chance that their frozen graves will tell us more about the 1918 virus that killed them and the global devastation it caused. CATCHING COLD is the story of 1918's pandemic and of the extraordinary community of scientists working to avert another disaster.

Pete Davies is the author of of a number of critically acclaimed, best-selling works of non-fiction including ALL PLAYED OUT, I LOST MY HEART TO THE BELLES and THIS ENGLAND. He lives in West Yorkshire.