OK, so with a zillion books on my to-be-read stack, I got interested in this subject and ordered Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It in hardcover. I'm glad I did; it was worth reading, and I like books on the specialized technical histories (science, technology, engineering, medicine), into which category this one falls. I give it a weak +, though, not a strong one, because the story kind of sputters off at the end.
About a third of the book is a sort of social history of the 1918 flu, which killed perhaps as many as 100 million people worldwide. The rest is the story of the search in more recent years for samples of the actual flu virus. It's been recovered from bodies buried in permafrost and from preserved specimens in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and various labs have been working on coming up with RNA sequences for the genes of this particular flu virus.
That's the problem with this book: while labs have been working on this flu virus, they haven't cracked it, either as of the completion date of the manuscript (midyear this year) or now (as far as I can tell from some quick poking around on the web). It makes me wonder whether the author signed a contract a year or two back to deliver a book and was unable to extend it even though the story is not finished.
Of course, science is never finished. But there's a real lack of closure here, and I have a sense (based on the pace of the work Kolata does report) that there might be some major news in the next year or two.
But that's a minor point. Overall, the writing is strong here and the story is a fascinating one. The history is much more on the level of people than of medicine; Kolata isn't afraid to bring in technical issues (or avoid them; she presents PCR as a "miraculous method" without even bothering to try to explain it), but they don't carry the story, the researchers do.
And it was nice to read a first edition hardcover again. Farrar, Straus and Giroux are still using a good quality of paper, fine bindings and heavy dust jackets on their books. Since most of what I read ends up being book club editions, used books or old paperbacks, I enjoy the casual sensuality of reading something made with more lasting care.