in of bears and ballots heather mundy recounts her election to the state assembly in haines alaska and provides an inside look at local politics . finally titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on tv on c-span2 . >> we are grateful to all of you for being here and for valuing the past, present and future. the story that has historians can teach us a lot about how to live in the present and plan for the future and no era is more instructive to us right now been 1918 when the asian flu shuttered businesses and killed hundreds of thousands.

here to talk with us about what we became known 102 years ago as spanish flu is catherine arnold who poured over eyewitness accounts of the illness from its early beginnings at places like a military base in kansas to its effects on a number of american writers like john steinbeck. she read english at the university of cambridge and holds a further degree in psychology and is the author of several books about the history oflondon and her book globe, the world of shakespeare's london published by simon and schuster in 2015 and she's joining us today from the uk . welcome catherine . >> thank you for being here with us. >> in telling the story of this disease you focus on first-person accounts from doctors, nurses and children all over the world. did you choose to take such a personal view of the pandemic ?

>> i wanted to write a book that people can relate to but there's the story about where people can read it and find characters like themselves. it was almost like a disaster movie. we've got people on the titanic or whatever so the full spectrum of human personality types and people, there's so much you can relate to that a very consumer experience whether it's because of their age or their gender or their background. so many people, close to 1 million people died and it was also because there were books about it being known at the time and they tended to be financial academic so there very much written by academics for academics. so it's the strictest thinking medical side of it. or the epidemiology or even geographical side or the

economic consequences but less about the lives ofpeople involved . but because i've been a feature writer of a regional daily it was important for me to bring it to life and just to tell readers that these are livingbreathing suffering people just like yourself . >> in the books opening pages you say it's hard to imagine a similar scenario and schools shuttered morethan hospitals, overwhelmed cities , hundreds dead and dying today and do you still feel that way are are we seeing to re-repeat itself in frontof our eyes ? >> i had no idea we would haveanother pandemic . i've been reassured that the systems will not overwhelm us in the same waybut i'll get back to them in a moment . what was curious to me while i was writing it was a

beautiful spring day on my street in the suburbs, everything seeming absolutely marvelous and i just felt it was like this in the street in suburban areas of maybe chicago or philadelphia. somebody's just sitting there writing, somebody's daughter is saying hey, i have these books and do you want to have them and out of nowhere this terrible thing strikes and people in the streetstart getting sick and dying more and more every day . imagine a scenario like that would have been very much a horror story . i took comfort in what i knew which is what i've been told on both sides of the atlantic preparations and then a deal with just such a pandemic. it's true to say that in some ways in this country and have a comparatively well on

lockdown. but i felt there was far more in the way of government control standing in the way of total annihilation and recognizingthe threats unfortunately . the big difference now is numbers. coronavirus has been terrible and it has killed i think around 250,000 worldwide. it's killed really 100,000 in the states. but nothing like the scale of 1918 when 100 million people lost their lives and at an almost inconceivable level, 550,000 people in the states died. that was more than the losses in the first world war but of course there's a bit beyond that so there's a case for us like in many pandemics 100 years ago, we were given some indication on the course of existential crisis that people face that real feeling

we haven't had for generations of lives at risk from, we live all of us with the knowledge that we have to die and it's quite a big shock for us to be told you could live, you could lose your nearest and dearest if you step outside your front door. that takes a lot of getting used to and certainly the younger generation have struggled with. >> you have previous works of history as well on the city of london and members ofthe royal family . how didyou become fascinated with this disease ? >> apart from the h1 and one, on my previous books about london were aboutthe dark side of london . death and burials and that

was the treatment of mental health, capital punishment and the sex industry but because i've written about the dark side of london, it seems natural to me to do a book on spanish flu, england and that was the first book i brought to my agent but i began to investigate, it became obvious to me that perhaps i'd better do a book about spanish flu but then we realized that it was a deliberate thing and the best way to approach it was to attempt to write about it globally. in structural terms it's had a problem in terms of creating minorities, that was one of the reasons i use so many eyewitness accounts and because banish flu like all pandemics was going on at a lot of places in thesame time , it didn't do a simple narrative on one place, china and the united states. it was literally all over the

place. and trying to come up with a narrative was like trying to nail jelly to the wall. so that was quite time-consuming. but it was also a personal connection because my father was a great deal younger than my mother and he lost both his parents to spanish flu. in the last year of course so there was kind of an interest in this terrible thing that had happened in my family to have no family at all on his side, nothing. nobody. and the fact that he wouldn't talk about it made it even more intriguing area and it kind of hung over my childhood like a dark paul. but it became something significant to me to write about you i had i sort of setting almost. >> what was your research process, particularly in the us, where did you find reliable information and how

did you go aboutgetting access to it . >> some of it was already there, some of it pbs made a brilliant series about 30 years ago. where they interview the last surviving people who had spanish flu. obviously most of the people had passed on but i also wrote the people's memoirs and i felt i'll look at memoirs in the background and look for anybody notable from that period so i did that. and of course i also looked into newspaper records. because obviously there's some great newspaper sources. where if you've got the patience to plug through them, it's useful material around it and also i looked at the more academic books where people have written learned articles about spanish flu. or investigations into the

infected tissue, the infected dna of people who died of spanish flu and some of the other investigations that took place in alaska as well. so a number of sources and in the uk, a lot from the imperial war museum which proved useful. >> you mentioned that more people died from this flu than from world war i. world war i was an important factor in moving the disease all over the world. tell us a little bit about the role of troop movements and how that influenced the way that the disease spreads. >> the world was influential for the way it spread the disease and partly for the way that the disease wasn't with the same vigor to tackle coronavirus now.

but while spanish flu would probably spread globally at the time, world war i really sped up the process because we've got a group of troop ships going from the us into europe and back again. on the larger scale you've got troop ships from the allies and germans going along the road to places like bombay and taking it with them. the only place it successfully captured up until january 1919 was australia. where had a very vigorous attitude towards quarantine. which really relax after the end of the war when it got in in the january 1919. and around about 9000 lost their lives to it. butif you think of the war ,

it turned into a giant petri dish with the flu just being spread around in every conceivable way. when it wasn't spread by troops, it was also spread by proper transports and in the us by the postal service. one research with trying to work out why native alaskans and native americans were dying in their hundreds and it turned out it was because the postal servicewas still getting through to them . it was relatively without them knowing but they were delivering the mail. [inaudible] >> because it was such a huge

and fundamentally vital event , all the focus really went on winning the war versus stopping the virus. >> the war also played a role in news about the virus having been suppressed or downplayed. why would that have happened and what effect did it have? >> that was mostly a question of morals. you start off with government in the uk, if a newspaper delved too deeply into reports of this strange new killer strain that would kill people, it would have been suppressed by something called the defense of the realm act . other ways of devaluing it or making it seem trivial work to make it more subject to ridicule which happened in the london times when they just get the people who had spanish flu were being infected and we should run up and get on with it. in september in the us when

it looked like spanish flu was making a bold return in the summer, again authorities were saying well, okay. but it's not that bad really. the last thing we wanted was then panicking because of people were dying on their base and all around. you didn't want to class particularly in the states where possibly certain people could use it for certain things and say i've been told we should never have entered the war. we're all going to die. but it was kind of way in which you can understand why they were trying to control this and information and suppressed and at the same time , somebody wants to get thetruth , then it's frustrating because people deserve to learn what was going on and of course it's not the point where you couldn't really deny that

this is happening because every newspaper in the united states is telling these huge banner headlines and 90 point with huge decimals. >> the disease also had a profound effect on some common american writers and in your book you mentioned thomas wolfe, john steinbeck, marion mccarthy, you mentioned catherine and porter. how, tell us about what they went through and how it affected their writing. >> was interesting about them is only those four writers like james thurber, they were the only preeminent people in the state who knew of it. it's quite surprising the person who wrote about it mythologized the way the war was . and in capturing porter's case, she was a journalist in

colorado in the rocky mountains news. and she was involved with coffee and cigarettes that she spent on close and she was living in lodgings when she became ill . and her landlady took on through her out so then catherine terms are ready for health and managed to find her a hospital bed without which she would probably have died so catherine was lying in hospital here in behind the screens hearing the doctors talk about her and giving up on her and that rocky mountain news was setting her victory in trying . in this next journalist it just makes me shudder to think about. but she pulled through. but she had, she was violently ill and when she was recovering he tried to get out of bed. and then she had one of the other distinct things with

spanish flu which is her head turned right overnight and it never grew back to its natural color. she had to diet black rest of her life but capturing her in her lucky state, she took the attitude that she said it paled in her memoir. it really made me decide what i needed to do, i just decided i was going tobe a writer i should get on with it . so she had a good outcome. she had been saddled with her more mother from the flu. marion mccarthy suffered badly. one news of the flu began, mary was about nine years old and she decided we should go back to home i think it was minneapolis . they're going to go back to the midwest . from seattle. and so herfather , he was always broke.

on the train he was became sick. under conductor wanted to throw them off the train at a station in the middle of the disciplinary. but to mary's astonishment or farmer pulled a government conductor and he said i'd like to see you try. but they died and mary's grandparents went to the station and thetrain arrived . she was brought up by a cold, distant relative. i'm sure they were just trying to do their best but she said it changed thecourse of her life . she had married and went to a book club and that would have been it but she became an intellectual list and author so i think it did change the

course of her life. briefly, john steinbeck caught spanish flu and it was only after he recovered but it was a bit strange afterwards. one of the common traits, one of the common traits which was quite often spanish flu survivors and medical problems the rest of their lives and the common one was depression. and it said he suffered from this. and novice diseases also. and thomas wolfe, in the look homeward angel he writes and recounts of losing his brother so he recounts having not much done with his life but the description of his gradual decline and get is absolutely heart wrenching. and it's a very good piece of american gothic as well the

verdict absolutely outstanding piece of writing what you would have thought it had produced so many other great writers that especially in the generation that there would be more of that spanish flu. >> i was struck by the way that seems to have disappeared from the collective cultural memory. and i was wondering if you have thoughts on why that was. >> yes, i think it was because it was just so portable. as one writer i quoted book whose name escapes me but he's talks about he's become the literary editor of the new yorker new yorker and he said after his novel and sibling died, the worldjust changed for him forever . something was lost and there was a kind of sadness which never went away because i

think it was ghastly and so grotesque , it was so harrowing that this was simply something people cannot deal with on top of the war. it was one of those things that was common enough to know that your ancestors would go away to war and probably not come back area that was unpleasant culturally acceptable. but to those people at home in bed from this monstrous disease was a whole lot more difficult to deal with especially when say in europe people have had four years of it and in the state they had the run up to it and the anxiety of seeing their young men marched off. so i think this was just the final straw after but more painful experience of war. and i think that's one of the reasons people do not want to remember it. >> just a reminder for those who are watching , we do have

a question. you can type it into the q&a box. i'm going to ask catherine a few more questions and then we're going to ask your question please feel free to use that and we will contact you via chat if you can find out if you like to ask your question yourself. in reading the book, i was struck by a number of parallels today but the one i found most interesting was that when the disease did take hold in people started to say all right, we need to socially isolate. we needto, people need to wear masks. there was some resistance to that , correct. >> yes. this is quite late, later on in the pandemic because in general 1919 we have what is called the third wave because this to life certain other things and we hope not the coronavirus. it came in ways no dive and

return again. so the third wave was waiting in january 1919. from there it was, and from now on if you wear a mask, you go out you have to wear a mask. it's mandatory even though legally it wasn't enforceable . until they decided to arrest anybody who was seen without a mask but these people were happy to comply because they've already in the worst of it and the last thing they wanted was to go back to kind of conditions that they witness in september and november. however , there's always a group of people who don't agree that in this case a started something called anti-master league in this group was composed of physicians, so they had a meeting in october and this

may be the place outside because it would have been safer, they had a meeting and more comments from the ones that look, what we should do is we should do petitions saying we don't agree with this mask wearing. don't make it compulsory. but of course the more radical ones were like it's unconstitutional. this is against our rights. this is not what it is to be an american. we don't want to wear these masks and this went on for several weeks and then at one point, and improvised explosive device was sent to the public health offices and it killed, it had three tons of gunpowder so you can imagine what wouldhave happened if it had been detonated . luckily it wasn't but soon afterwards the mayor said right, next time we have a

meeting going to say that masks are no longergoing to be compulsory but he did add this . this caveat that if we lift mask regulations you do realize that the death toll is going to rise. and so within about 10 days of getting rid of masks in compulsory, 300 people died . of spanish flu. so yes of course there are parallels with michigan some weeks ago when people were calling in but it wasn't quite as extreme as sending ied's two governors offices. >> in the coronavirus we're dealing with as had serious health considerations in the prison population. and the 1918 flu had much the

same scenario. there was a doctor there who you quote in the book, doctor stanley who had a very controversial approach, in some cases horrifying approach to thedisease . can you tell us about how it succeeded through the prison ? >> just briefly i think it was the most shocking aspect of things was that doctor stanley used prisoners almost as an experiment to see how easily his male prisoners would get influenza virus. so he would deliberately put infected men in the recreation rooms in the present and people were not infected. he later conducted a number of grotesque experiments which i can't go into into much detail but involved castrating various people and

giving their castrated genitals to other prisoners to see if this would change levels of hormones so if not for the squeamish but i think it's the unethical nature of this. obviously prisons like schools and like barracks work military bases were places where everybody is crowded close together. and obviously can staging could spread swiftly but i think doctor stanley is a supreme example of an advantage of the kind of metrics experimental qualities of the disease. and just exploiting them. >> we have quite a few questions from some folks so we will take those in just a second. it's a reminder to take back into the q&a box. i want to ask you what lesson you feel that 1918 can teach

us. what do you think we can learn particularly from this in our current moment. >> the question and i think if anything it obviously they were able to do in world war i because the main focus was always winning the war. i think we've learned a lot of the value of social distancing and mask wearing if you need to. quarantine, and general hygiene. but personally i think people have become a lot more supportive and friendly to each other on the street level. people in communities have been overwhelmingly supportive of each other. but a national level, in my country and in europe there's been lots of political unrest and uncertainty about the way the authorities are handling.

i think we've learned not to trust signs and in those days there was little scientific news that they knew about influenza and they realize it was highly contagious. but they were only just coming to terms with the idea of the virus . the election microscope was not like invented until 1930 and because of the vaccine, the first new vaccine was developeduntil about 1938 . what we're doing now obviously is research scientists are working night and day to try and evolve the vaccine of the course they may never do so. and it may be that we have to live with this awful virus next rest of our lifetime probably and mask up and down up again. but i think we've learned to adjust our focus because were not involved in a massive global conflict .

and i think we've learned a lot about being patient. i'm always amazed by the amount of people that will comply with rules and if there told the supermarket and there, they do so because they realized not just going after themselves but their communities and their loved ones. >> .. >> spanish flu and also is there anything to be revealed from this tendency to associate

places with pandemics like the hong kong flu and donald donalds have been quoted and calling the coronavirus the chinese virus, that sort of thing? >> guest: sure. a couple of things. i'm getting a weird echo here but eye'll good on talking. the first thing is that according to research i've looked at, generally agreed that what we called spanish flu originated in china, was brought here to the out and europe by chinese laborers recruited to help with the war effort, and spread in the united states and europe and the uk at the same time. it's believed to be a virus that

leaked or the species barrier but calling it spanish flu is a bit of a misnomer. the called it this because it up came out in its first form in spain in the april-may of 1918, it's already been doing a tour of europe, but it showed up in spain, nearly killed the king of spain, but because it became so hugely imminent it was possible to discuss the flu in the press. spain was neutral so they can say what they liked in newspapers and magazines. just discussing the flu in spain soon gave it the name spanish flu, even thoughed had nothing to do with the unfortunate span wish people themselves and they called it the disease solve the soldier after a show running in madrid at the time. i agree this is bit of a bias when people name a disease after

a country. wuhan flu, hong kong flu, asian flu, and in a way that wouldn't be acceptable these days. we call it coronavirus, we depth call it wuhan flu. that kind of answered your question. i don't know the fact that there's a sort of unpleasant tendency to blame other groups that crops up at this time. so, many people blamed it on spain because there were annoyed at spain being neutral. perhaps a certain degree of kind of silent phobia is why they call it wuhan flew or hong kong new. -- hong con -- hong kong flu: >> there's an insight into the way people name things.

>> a question next from natasha. >> okay. hi, natasha. >> how are you? >> i'm good. thank you. >> thank you. >> caller: my question is, it's really interesting to hear how some newspapers downplay the pandemic back then, just as we're seeing today. so, i'm curious, two questions. were people generally trusting of the media during this time, like newspapers and radio? that's my first question. the other question is, how do people get their public health information, especially since the science wasn't there as much as it is today. >> guest: okay. well, the first one. is a mentioned earlier in this talk, newspapers were in a difficult position because if they said too much about what was really happening, they were basically spiked, basically had a -- slapped on them or told

they couldn't print certain material because it would upset national morale during the war, particularly common in britain. not so much in the states. having look at the up up newspat the time i hey seed lands. people were getting their information from the press, and people getting more information in the u.s. from the press than we were over here, and many people were in europe. along with generally people trusting the press in those days was the fact that some people were devoid of resources. now we know that in seconds what is happening because it's just around the world so quickly with social media. then you could good for weeks and not no what was happening in the next town or village. this is the reason it spread so quickly because people didn't realize the enormity of what was

happening. didn't realize just how contagious and deadly this thing was. over here in britain, we had instances of people, in manchester, not knowing people were drying in the the -- numbers in manchester. remind me of the second question. >> the second bit was how do people get their public health information and then, for instance, were in public health campaigns by government? >> guest: yes, there were. in the united states, the surgeon general rupert blue, by september he was seeing the horror of spanish flu, seeing the impact it was having on the out, and he came up with a wholelet of instructions which were circulated by the newspapers and via public information.

all instructions you would expect, including wearing masks, but when he was surgeon general, he had no authority to impose these things, so he could only recommend what many states did was to print handbills, advising people what to do, and many places took the opportunity to close places of public entertainment and stores and church because they knew this was one way of controlling at the spread. another source of information was advertising. so, although the pharmacy companies advertised were obviously in the business of making money, their information was still of great use to the general public because even. i you didn't rush out and buy these -- any paper would tell you it might help, as prison might help -- aspirin might help

and cleanliness there was a life long obsession with cleanliness. this grandparents generation, everything was always being swabbed down and scrubbed and rinsed, windows left open, and i'm sure that part of the legacy of just about remembering the impact of spanish flu. i hope that helps. >> caller: thank you. >> host: we have a question from tessa that i'm going to read. in america was there a known way to alert neighbors to the fact that people were in quarantine? so was there a way to -- a sign to pest on the door? how did they get the word out that they were not -- that people shouldn't come in? >> guest: there was -- it was a

fairly -- unless it was last resort, the fact that people didn't -- well, people locked themselves a away as we do now but an arbitrary footing because you wanted to know whether you were just ill or had the flu. the way you knew if there was flu in your street if you saw a black crate tied to somebodiys doorknob you realize they had a death in the family and if it was unusual, then you could gather they were victims of spanish flu. itself if was a child, put out a white ribbon, and very soon these began to proliferate so you have other -- little girl growing up in philadelphia, challenged me, she said that everybody was out in street having parties, the happy italian community, then she looks up at the win deand

there are black ribbons hanging on the doctors. in the early days when there was still hearses and coffins, it was really only when things got bad that you would know. there wasn't any kind of symbol you could leave out, and remember it happened so fast, it was so fast in its impact so half the street could go in a matter of days. >> host: we have question from judy who also wants us to read it. for the 1918 flu, were there significant racial and economic disparitiys as to who caught it and who died from it? >> guest: yes. sadly. just as we're seeing today with coronavirus, the communities that suffered worse were the deprived communities. although high profile examples of up are class people who died,

generally more deprived you were, the more likely you were to die. social reasons. you have immigrants, in chicago, philadelphia, they would get it -- i hate the word put the word used by survivors -- they cramped poverty stricken conditions in substandard housing, all tried to be as hygienic as possible but there but sufficient sanitation or water and the italian community, jewish community, polish community, the african-american community, seemed to have suffered unduly. most of this is economic. over in south africa it was the native africans who died at a much higher rate than the white

settlers. and in new zealand the maurys, too, much i woulder numbers from, again, the white settlers. >> you allude today this earlier when we talk but the postal service and spreading the disease among native americans living in alaska, and we have a question from bill asking about conditions on native american reservations in the u.s. or first nation reservations in canada. >> guest: yes. the two things came out of this. for instance, at the canadian example, the alaskan example, the people who looked -- who researched there as communitied they hated the idea of isolation so a two-prong thing. as native americans they didn't

have the immune system to cope with spanish flu. nobody does but they are particularly vulnerable. then they live in communities that don't live separately so in alaska, the governor tried to tell people his alaskan natives lived in cabins. he said to them, don't go out. stay at home. just like we're being told now. but the distinction was to them to be on your own was worse than being dead. they lived together as communities. they act together. they spend time together. so many people told to just stay in their cabins, just died. we know now that many people who forced to self-isolate have problems -- sorry, it's very dry in here -- it seemed to me that in alaska this was an extreme

example. this is a community where you're only really alive if you're with your peers. opposite you were single and on your own you're as good as dead. >> host: had a question but the thomas wolfe book mentioned, look homeward, angel. >> guest: yes. >> host: good. i wanted to make sure we asked that. and we have a question from jonathon that you indicated that if novak is developed we may have to deal with -- if no vaccine is developed we may have to deal with coronavirus for the rest of our lives. absent a medical curer is there any period of time for the infection to sort of units course based on your research? >> guest: the problem is, we just do not know. we're in the dark as much as people were back in 1918. one over the most terrifying

thing but our virus is the not knowing. we can't just say this is an ordinary flu pandemic. it's not flu at all. it leads to pneumonia. it's the unknown quantity. , another -- a book out about this and she is a science journalist unlike me inch recent article she said we could be living with social isolation for the next two years, and it may be that we -- that no vaccine is available. i mean, this is kind of the worst-case scenario. it may be that within weeks we're told, yes, the scientists think -- but it's a lot -- it's in the not knowing that gets to all of us. it's the pain and suffering everybody is going through to a greater or lesser extent, the people who can't pretend the death beds of their loved ones,

lit -- can't attend the death beds of the loved ones,let alon the funerals. it's a huge crisis and we won't come through anytime soon but i guess we'll launch to live with it as we have head to live with the threat of terrorism, something horrible that we acknowledge in a way that perhaps our grandparents never did. >> host: how did the spanish flu have-dhow did the 1918 flu end? >> guest: good question. most reliable sources that i've looked at suggest that it died by attrition. just became weaker and weaker. you could say it was an example of herd immunity but that's a discredited notion. discredited to suggest that we should just allow coronavirus to be unleashed on the whole population, a darwin union --

darwinian level of do or die. it became weaker and weaker and died away. we don't know if that will happen with coronavirus. it would be great if it did, but who's to know. most authorities think that the spanish flu ling erred on into about 1920. john barry, wrote a huge book but the spanish flu in the states, apparently claims somebody in his family died of it in 1929, so quite remarkable it should have stayed until that point, and i've not been able to examine that in detail. i'd like to know where and when that person was when they succumbed to it. >> host: the last question we'll take is from carrie. you can knowing that your become is so reliant on first person accounts, have you been keeping a written record of your

experiences in the current pandemic for the future and what do you encourage people to write about so that futurehartans will have the types of personal accounts that help you write the book. >> guest: yes, i have. and also, a lot of broadcasting companies are encouraging people to do thatment we have a news station that gets people to do a coronavirus diary. i keep a diary anyway and have done for years, and i just put down little snippets, i see in the queue at the grocery store or the latest scandal that's been reported to do with it. i do keep an eye on it. but after this, i don't think i want to write but it again any significant way. the most i've done is oppressive, two pages to the korean edition, saying thank you for publishing my books in korea and how you guys handled it.

i think it's great that people can keep a diary anyway. in the 1940s there's a project called mass observation in the uk where people are actually -- in factories and offices and schools and churches were just encouraged to say what their life was like, and of course, later on for researchers it became a fascinating resource. so either a diary or a real diary like that, this is mine, bus if you want to leave it as part've your family the for your descendents to read or look back on on in ten years time you might want to use is as the basis of a story so keep a record. i do. >> host: thank you very much for your insights and for the book itself. which you can order via the link

we have in the chat earlier. we'll put the link up again. thank you very much for being here with us. thank you everyone for coming. we have enjoyed this conversation. 'er watching booktv on c-span2. next, democratic congresswoman ilhan omar of minnesota reflects on her life, then tevi troy, presidential historian and former syrup aide to president george w. bush looks at intern file that shaped several presidential administrations and later, ralph reed weighs in on why evangelical christians should support president trump. cob assaulture program guide or visit bv.