Out of the way

29: La Pequeña Burugesía en la Historia de la República Dominicana by Juan Bosch

Written in the 80s, this is a history of the first independent Dominican Republic, from the mid 1840s to the mid 1850s. It tells the story of a few personalities - primarily Santana and Baez, who wrestled for power and for the support of various factions of Dominican society in what seems to have been an interesting (in the sense of turbulent, if not shockingly violent) period of Dominican history.

Bosch tries to provide a marxist analaysis of the events, which strikes me as almost meaningless in the context, and something of a drawback in an otherwise interesting history. Still, an interesting read of about 150 pages...

Number 30!! (OK, enough of the silly icons already. And they are hardly the sort of thing associated with a story of so much suffering...)

The Great Influenza by John M Barry

I weakened and bought this at an airport. 450 pages of interestin history of science. The ostensible theme is the great influenza pandemic of 1918 to 1920, that devastated a world already exhausted in large part by World War I, and by most estimates killed many more people than the infamous trenches and battles of that bloody war.

The book has, as a sub-theme, the rise of American scientific medicine, which had taken place so recently that almost all of those responsible for the development from quackery to experimentally verified practice were still practising researchers when the "flu" struck.

It is an interesting read, seems well researched and documented, although extremely parochially focused on the USA - in part, I suppose, because the importance of the local medical scene is ultimately as important to the book as the "flu" itself - massive a topic as that is. This is, in part, a detective story - one that goes on before and after the main event, and one that has more deaths than almost anything I have read - and a true story at that. It is in part the story of a handul of extraordinary people, and of an extraordinary event. It also has some interesting things to say about the US today, and about government, research, and medicine. It took a long trip (two overnight flights) to read it, but it was a well written story explaining a lot about an event that I don't recall, but was remembered by many people the age of my grandparents or a little older in Australia (as described in the book in a rare departure from its American focus) as the return of the Black Death.