Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Dead Zone” – The 1918 Flu Epidemic

The writer Malcolm Gladwell once characterized his work as stories that help people “reflect on, or think about in new ways, the way they behave and their society behaves.”

Gladwell’s writing demonstrates a thoughtful, ever-curious mind at work. In 1997, he published “The Dead Zone,” a gripping piece about the catastrophic spread of the so-called Spanish flu, in 1918. In the fall of that year, a devastating strain of influenza emerged, overwhelming entire cities and towns across the globe and killing tens of millions of people.