Why read Stacking the Coffins?

Book cover of Stacking the Coffins: Influenza, War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918–19

Book description

The 1918-19 influenza epidemic killed more than 50 million people, and infected between one fifth and half of the world's population. It is the world's greatest killing influenza pandemic, and is used as a worst case scenario for emerging infectious disease epidemics like the corona virus COVID-19. It decimated families,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Stacking the Coffins as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Chris Lawlor

Author

The ‘decade of centenaries’ from 2013-2023 has seen a plethora of books published about events during the Irish Revolution of a hundred years ago or so. Most of them have a glaring omission in that they do not mention, or only barely mention, the great influenza pandemic (the Spanish Flu) of 1918-1919, despite the fact that infection rates and mortality rates were extremely high. Milne’s book tackles the subject head-on, and fills a gap in the narrative of the pivotal decade 1913-23 in Irish history. The high quality of the research is evident in the enormous level of detail throughout…

From Chris' list on The best books on lesser-known aspects of Irish history.