here to talk with us about what became as known as 102 years ago is the spanish flu is kathryn arnold poured over years of eyewitness accounts from eyewitnesses in the early beginning at places like a military base in kansas to its number of prominent american writers like john steinbeck and kathryn and port-au-prince she read english at the university of cambridge and holds a further degree in psychology she's the author of several books about the history of london and she was published by simon & schuster in 2015 she's joining us today from the uk, welcome. >> welcome thank you for being here with us. >> and telling the story of this disease you focused on first-person accounts from doctors, nurses, children all over the world. why did you choose to take such a personal view of the pandemic? >> i wanted to write a book that people could relate to. the story about spanish flu that people could read it and find characters like myself. it almost developed a movie you've got people on the titanic or whatever it's all spectrum with personality types. people, so many of these books you ca