Flu Pandemic of 1918

In the work of writers like W.B. Yeats and Virginia Woolf, we can find new ways to tell our own stories.

The 1918 flu pandemic helped to usher in the Hollywood studio system. Could Covid-19 transform the industry?

The 1918 influenza pandemic had a profound impact on how librarians do their work, transforming libraries into centers of community care.

Decades of discrimination in Fresno laid the groundwork for a housing crisis today.

A hundred years ago, the U.S. was riven by disease, inflamed with racial violence, and torn between isolation and globalism. Sound familiar?

Disease has never been merely a biological phenomenon. Instead, all illnesses—including COVID-19—are social problems for humans to solve.

The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last major pandemic. Here’s the full story.

Coronavirus songwriting has gone as global as the pandemic itself, creating a new genre called pandemic pop. It’s a tradition with a long history.

Just like today, brass and bureaucrats ignored warnings, and sent troops overseas despite the consequences.

How prior generations of Americans responded to the threat of infectious disease.

The magical in-betweenness—and surprising epidemiological history—of the porch.

For more than a century, school nurses have improved public health in schools and beyond.

The first women to serve in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps helped improve military medicine and expand women’s opportunities to officially serve in the armed forces.

The Christmas classic, released 75 years ago, conveys many messages beyond having faith in one another.

For decades, U.S. cities have been closing or neglecting public restrooms, leaving millions with no place to go.

Candies of the Halloween season have roots in the sweet treats and real horrors of the Great War.

Records tell the story of the decline of the patriarchy, marrying young, and pandemic fallout. Digitizing the data could reveal even richer tales.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.

Even so, many diseases have been tamed. Will Covid-19 be next?

2020 was full of efforts to archive photos and artifacts of the pandemic — an impulse born of a sense of witnessing history, and a desire to speak to the future.

Osteopathy was founded by a 19th-century healer who believed the body was a self-healing machine.

The enchanted terms in which F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed modern America still blind us to how scathingly he judged it.

A history of inflammatory illness epithets.

From plague times to the coronavirus, the history of our flawed ability to process mass casualty events.

In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point.

Native communities in North America have been particularly hard-hit by COVID-19. This isn't the first time.

The diseases that prove best suited to global expansion are those that best exploit humans' global networks and behaviors in a given age.

From the 1918 Spanish flu to Covid-19, broken treaties have been the foundation of health crises among Native people.

They’re good for kickstarting political debate but analogies with the past are often ahistorical and should be treated with care.

Reflections on reading Nietzsche in Alaska in the early days of Covid-19.