Pale Rider - Laura Spinney

Published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage Publishing: London, 2017.

Looking for a book that had something to do with a plague or a virus (for this year's Reading Challenge) brought me to this non-fiction work about the Spanish Flu. It was either that or reading a fictional work including a flu or virus, but most of those end up being about zombies or vampires, or are in other ways dark and brooding - and I wasn't feeling like slogging through one of those! This book had moments of heaviness, when the toll from the flu was mentioned, but overall was an interesting work that taught me a lot about that pandemic in particular, as well as pandemics in general and a bit of human nature.

I learned, for example, that the Spanish Flu (probably) killed between 1.5 to 2 percent of the people it infected, and yet it was one of deadliest pandemics that we know of. That puts the fact that Covid-19 (according to a very brief Google search) ended up killing about 1.4 to 2.7 percent of those it infected into perspective, and also makes me realise why governments still made a huge deal out of Covid - it was (percentage-wise) extremely deadly!

Speaking of Covid-19, this book was published in 2017, two years before the Covid-19 outbreak, and that makes the book even more interesting. Spinney talks a lot about how she anticipates the world reacting to the next pandemic, and even tries to predict when it might happen. Interestingly, she points out that many pandemics happen during La Niña weather patterns, and states that one of those was about to happen at the time of her writing, so in some ways she was not far off! In talking about how people reacted to the Spanish Flu, Spinney observes that many people were mistrusting of vaccines at the time, and even notes that when vaccines are mandated people can react poorly to the idea of them... also fascinating when compared to recent events.

Pale Rider doesn't just focus on the Spanish Flu and its statistics, however. Spinney also looks the the history of influenza, and the different ways in which the Spanish Flu impacted the world, even beyond the pandemic itself. 

I know I've said it a few times, but its a very interesting book.

And nicer to read than a Zombie book.

Completed 1 May 2025.



(2025 Reading Challenge - "Virus/Plague")

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