Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten 'Spanish' Flu of 1918-1919 ed. by Guy Beiner (review)

Abstract

Guy Beiner’s edited volume Pandemic Re-Awakenings is a comprehensive treatment of the theme of “memory” in the history and historiography of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. Bringing together twenty-three authors researching various aspects of the flu, Beiner’s volume examines processes of remembering, forgetting and rediscovering that have determined individual and collective memories of the flu, their absence, continuity and reemergence after the flu’s centenary and COVID-19. The result is a thorough and nuanced collection of chapters that express the complexities of memory in different parts of the world and from different perspectives. Beiner’s volume is not the first to discuss memory and the flu, nor is the topic new ground for Beiner and contributors like Howard Philips and David Killingray. Pandemic Re-Awakenings marks the first time these authors share a single volume and the second time since 2003 that Phillips and Killingray share the same volume with other specialists in the history of disease, such as Geoffrey Rice and Nancy Bristow.