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Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer - and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic.<BR><BR>'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story... Pale Rider is not just an excavation but a reimagining of the past' Guardian<BR><BR> With a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people and a global reach, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history. And yet, in our popular conception it exists largely as a footnote to World War I.<BR><BR> In Pale Rider, Laura Spinney recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic, tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa. She shows how the pandemic was shaped by the interaction of a virus and the humans it encountered; and how this devastating natural experiment put both the ingenuity and the vulnerability of humans to the test.<BR><BR> Laura Spinney demonstrates that the Spanish flu was as significant - if not more so - as two world wars in shaping the modern world; in disrupting, and often permanently altering, global politics, race relations, family structures, and thinking across medicine, religion and the arts.<BR><BR>'Weaves together global history and medical science to great effect ... Riveting.' Sunday Times

Eine Pandemie, die alles veränderte - der brandaktuelle SPIEGEL-Bestseller zur Geschichte der Spanischen Grippe jetzt im Taschenbuch! Es begann mit einem Virus, es endete im Massensterben und in einer völlig neuen Welt: Laura Spinneys Bestseller über die Spanische Grippe von 1918 zieht unfreiwillig akkurate Parallelen ins Heute. Als prämierte Wissenschaftsjournalistin und Bestseller-Autorin hat Laura Spinney eigentlich nur ihren Job gemacht. Ihr Buch über die Spanische Grippe und ihre allumfassenden Folgen für die gesamte Welt ist akribisch recherchiert, kenntnisreich analysiert und in einem atemberaubenden Tempo geschrieben, bei dem Medizingeschichte im Handumdrehen zum Thriller wird. Doch nur wenige Jahre nach der Ersterscheinung auf Deutsch ist "1918 - Die Welt im Fieber" zu einem fast prophetischen Kompendium geworden, das ungeahnte Parallelen zwischen den Jahren 1918 und 2020 zieht. Denn die Spanische Grippe und die Ausbreitung der Corona-Pandemie gleichen sich nicht nur in ihrem Krankheitsverlauf, sondern auch in der Reaktion der Menschen auf Vorsichtsmaßnahmen, Impfungen und die kulturelle Veränderung. Spanische Grippe und Corona: Wiederholt sich die Geschichte?  Ohne das Wissen aus der Infektionskette der Spanischen Grippe hätte die heutige Medizin nicht so schnell reagieren können - und wir hätten Covid-19 nicht so schnell verstanden. Laura Spinney bleibt bei den Fakten, aber wirft zwingende Fragen auf, die aus trockener Geschichtsbetrachtung einen tiefgreifenden Perspektivwechsel machen. Faktenreich und spannend wie ein Thriller, erstklassig recherchiert, brillant erzählt: Das vielleicht wichtigste Geschichtsbuch unserer Zeit Viren hat es immer gegeben. Seuchen ebenso. Doch bisher blieben sie immer im Nebel der Geschichte. Der SPIEGEL-Bestseller "1918 - Die Welt im Fieber" holt die Erfahrungen der Menschheit mitten hinein ins Heute. Ein Taschenbuch, das man gelesen haben muss!

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECTAND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025*'The fascinating story of ancient words ... new revelations await' The Guardian'A magisterial feat' New Scientist________________________________One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story.Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity's past. All three of these languages - and hundreds more - share a single ancient ancestor.Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings - the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.Protois a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

*A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, PROSPECTAND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2025*'The fascinating story of ancient words ... new revelations await' The Guardian'A magisterial feat' New Scientist________________________________One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story.Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity's past. All three of these languages - and hundreds more - share a single ancient ancestor.Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings - the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.Protois a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

Quando si chiede qual è stato il principale disastro del XX secolo, quasi nessuno risponde l¿influenza spagnola. Davvero l¿abbiamo dimenticata? Eppure nel 1918 ha letteralmente cambiato il mondo uccidendo in soli due anni milioni di persone. Tra le vittime anche artisti e intellettuali del calibro di Guillaume Apollinaire, Egon Schiele e Max Weber. Nonostante l¿entità della tragedia, le conseguenze sono rimaste a lungo offuscate dalla devastazione della Prima guerra mondiale e relegate a un ruolo secondario. Laura Spinney ricostruisce la storia della pandemia seguendone le tracce in tutto il globo, dall¿India al Brasile, dalla Persia alla Spagna, dal Sudafrica all¿Ucraina. Inquadrandola da un punto di vista scientifico, storico, economico e culturale, l¿autrice le restituisce il posto che le spetta nella storia del Novecento quale fattore in grado di dare forma al mondo moderno, influenzando la politica globale e il nostro modo di concepire la medicina, la religione, l¿arte. Attraverso queste pagine si legge il passato, ma si può tentare di immaginare il futuro: la prossima pandemia influenzale, le armi a disposizione per combatterla e i potenziali punti deboli dei nostri sistemi sanitari. Arriveremmo preparati ad affrontare un¿eventuale emergenza? Das Urheberrecht an bibliographischen und produktbeschreibenden Daten und an den bereitgestellten Bildern liegt bei Informazioni Editoriali, I.E. S.r.l., oder beim Herausgeber oder demjenigen, der die Genehmigung erteilt hat. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.