More Deadly Than War

New York Times–Bestselling Author: "Facts, quotes, anecdotes, and visual images tell the combined history of the 1918 flu epidemic and World War I." —Kirkus Reviews

It was the worst disease outbreak in modern times: the Spanish flu, which struck in the final year of the First World War and killed far more people than COVID-19—an estimated fifty to one hundred million. This dramatic narrative, told through the stories and voices of the people caught in the deadly maelstrom, explores how this vast, global epidemic was intertwined with the horrors of World War I—and how it could happen again.


Complete with photographs, period documents, modern research, and firsthand reports by medical professionals and survivors, More Deadly Than War provides captivating insight into a catastrophe that transformed America in the early twentieth century.

A Junior Library Guild Selection

"[A] forthright chronicle . . . Davis puts a human face on the pandemic, interlacing tales of political, military, and civilian luminaries struck by the flu." —Publishers Weekly

"Richly illustrated . . . Davis draws on recent research to explain how the pandemic was boosted by World War I [and] untangles the scientific advances, international conflicts and cultural currents that shaped this catastrophic event." —The Washington Post (Best New Children's and YA Books of the Month)


"An important history—and an important reminder that we could very well face such a threat again." —Deborah Blum, New York Times–bestselling author of The Poison Guide: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

"[A] vivid account." —Karen Blumenthal, award-winning author of Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929