John M. Barry

John M. Barry grew up in Rhode Island, graduated from Brown University, and then moved to Washington, D.C., to begin a career as a freelance writer. He published his first book, a political history called The Ambition and The Power: A True Story of Washington, in 1989. For his second book, The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer, he teamed up with co-author Dr. Steven Rosenberg. While Barry’s previous books were well-reviewed, he achieved wider recognition with Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, which was first published in 1997 and which experienced a resurgence in popularity after Hurricane Katrina. Today, however, he is best known for The Great Influenza, which was first published in 2004 and has been re-published in five new editions, most recently in January 2021 with an afterword that addresses the COVID-19 pandemic.