The Great Horse Flu
A Forgotten Contagion and the Fate of Reconstruction America
$67.15
- Hardcover
336 pages
- Release Date
6 October 2026
Summary
Seven years after the US Civil War and nearly 150 years before COVID, horses near Toronto began falling deathly ill with a sickness soon diagnosed as influenza. It took just a few weeks for this mutant flu variant to spread throughout southeastern Canada and into the northeastern US, infecting more than 90 percent of horses, donkeys, and mules wherever it struck. By the time the outbreak relented more than a year later, the Great Horse Flu of 1872 to 1873 had convulsed nearly every corner of …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781469698434 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1469698439 |
| Author: | Thomas G. Andrews |
| Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Imprint: | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 336 |
| Release Date: | 6 October 2026 |
| Dimensions: | 25mm x 155mm x 235mm |
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Critics Review
“Imagine if all of America suffered a prolonged power outage, or if all the gas pumps simultaneously went dry. With compassion and the deft hand of a preeminent historian at the top of his game, Thomas Andrews explores a largely forgotten crisis of comparable proportions: a devastating pandemic that infected millions of horses across North America, paralyzed the economy, and nearly brought national life to a halt.”—Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West
“Few historical moments, and even fewer history books, bring an entire continent into view. But Thomas Andrews’s remarkable history of the Great Horse Flu has done it.” —Beth Lew-Williams, author of John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under Racial Law
“Brilliant and beautifully written. Thomas Andrews fundamentally changes our understanding of the Reconstruction era by exploring relationships among animals, human and non-human alike.”—Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek, winner of the Bancroft Prize
“A monumental contribution to the history of contagious disease … Deeply compassionate, The Great Horse Flu illuminates the many ties that bind us across species, space, and time.”—Elizabeth A. Fenn, author of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82
“Weaving together a deep understanding of ecology, people, and horses, The Great Horse Flu is deeply researched and crisply delivered—a masterpiece of environmental history.”—William T. Taylor, author of Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History
“We can better understand human history when we put disease back into it, as Thomas Andrews does with this fascinating and engaging work.”—Amanda Kay McVety, author of The Rinderpest Campaigns: A Virus, Its Vaccines, and Global Development in the Twentieth Century
“Innovative and important. Thomas Andrews recovers rarely heard voices as he reveals the interconnections of North America through the lens of the epizootic.”—Susan D. Jones, author of Death in a Small Package: A Short History of Anthrax
Thomas G. Andrews
Thomas G. Andrews is professor of history and director of the Center of the American West, University of Colorado Boulder. A leading historian of labor, capitalism, and the American West, he is the author of Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, which won a Bancroft Prize and is widely regarded as a landmark work of American history.
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