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B O O K R E V IE W S attempts by scholars to discover the reason for the lethality of the Spanish flu. The work is deepened in Chapter 4 – Am I gonna die?:round one, two, three and four – with information on the influenza epidemics of more recent years, indicating their specificities, with emphasis on H2N2. The author focuses on the 2009 pandemic, which had a very rapid spread capacity, but Brown emphasizes that the recovery occurred for the majority of those infected without the need for medical treatment. Brown also reports what he considers to be the most lasting effect of the flu pandemic, namely the population confusion: although official documents predicted a dangerous winter and the media reported frequent deaths, the viral outbreak was no more or less lethal than other common colds. There were also accusations that the number of deaths reported was exaggerated. On this point, a journal editor reported that the circulating messages about the high lethality of the 2019 pandemic were associated with the pharmaceutical industry interests so that it could sell its drugs on the market, and that professionals from the World Health Organization were complicit in this. The discomfort was general. For Brown, even with the scientific knowledge accumulation about the flu, inadequacies of preventive public policies responses, in addition to the reaction of the media, are obstacles to the effective virus battle. However, a gap in the book is not dealing with direct and indirect costs arising from the epidemic, since gains in relation to mortality did not mean lower expenditures for the health system in areas where populations were affected by the pandemic of 2019. Thus, the flu may not have been more deadly, but it caused negative impacts on the populations in terms of their morbidity, disability and health indicators in general. Chapter 5 – Ressurecting the flu – analyzes the 1918 virus genetic sequencing studies. One of the greatest scholars of Spanish flu, Jeffery Taubenberger, subdivides the 1918 epidemic into waves. He points out that the identification of a RNA positive case for influenza from the first wave could indicate a genetic basis for virulence, allowing differences in viral sequences to be highlighted. The identification of human influenza RNA samples prior to 1918 would help researchers understand the timing of the emergence of the 1918 virus, shedding light on all flu pandemics. Chapter 6 – Data, intuition and other weapons of war – reveals the thoughts of the author as an emergency doctor. Brown does not consider it common in emergency care to request tests in case of flu: patient history and symptoms are more important for the diagnosis. For the author the data are not useful to solve outbreaks and immediate epidemics, but Brown J. Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History. Nova York: Atria Books; 2018.