Plagues and Peoples

Author: William McNeill
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307773663
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
The history of disease is the history of humankind: an interpretation of the world as seen through the extraordinary impact—political, demographic, ecological, and psychological—of disease on cultures. "A book of the first importance, a truly revolutionary work." —The New Yorker From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, Plagues and Peoples is "a brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews). Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter was added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his introduction to this edition. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is essential reading—that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening.

Plagues and Peoples

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781439503133
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

Plagues and Peoples

Author: William McNeill
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385121229
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.

Plagues upon the Earth

Author: Kyle Harper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224722
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Book Description
A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

Plagues in World History

Author: John Aberth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442207965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Plagues in World History provides a concise, comparative world history of catastrophic infectious diseases, including plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, influenza, and AIDS. Geographically, these diseases have spread across the entire globe; temporally, they stretch from the sixth century to the present. John Aberth considers not only the varied impact that disease has had upon human history but also the many ways in which people have been able to influence diseases simply through their cultural attitudes toward them. The author argues that the ability of humans to alter disease, even without the modern wonders of antibiotic drugs and other medical treatments, is an even more crucial lesson to learn now that AIDS, swine flu, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and other seemingly incurable illnesses have raged worldwide. Aberth's comparative analysis of how different societies have responded in the past to disease illuminates what cultural approaches have been and may continue to be most effective in combating the plagues of today.

Viruses, Plagues, and History

Author: Michael B. A. Oldstone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190056789
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Book Description
"Here, my previous edition of Viruses, Plagues, & History is updated to reflect both progress and disappointment since that publication. This edition describes newcomers to the range of human infections, specifically, plagues that play important roles in this 21st century. The first is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), an infection related to Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). SARS was the first new-found plague of this century. Zika virus, which is similar to yellow fever virus in being transmitted by mosquitos, is another of the recent scourges. Zika appearing for the first time in the Americas is associated with birth defects and a paralytic condition in adults. Lastly, illness due to hepatitis viruses were observed prominently during the second World War initially associated with blood transfusions and vaccine inoculations. Since then, hepatitis virus infections have afflicted millions of individuals, in some leading to an acute fulminating liver disease or more often to a life-long persistent infection. A subset of those infected has developed liver cancer. However, in a triumph of medical treatments for infectious diseases, pharmaceuticals have been developed whose use virtually eliminates such maladies. For example, Hepatitis C virus infection has been eliminated from almost all (>97%) of its victims. This incredible result was the by-product of basic research in virology as well as cell and molecular biology during which intelligent drugs were designed to block events in the hepatitis virus life-cycle"--

Plagues and the Paradox of Progress

Author: Thomas J. Bollyky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038455
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

The Global Condition

Author: William Hardy McNeill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691025599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
William H. McNeill is known for his ability to portray the grand sweep of history. Now two of his popular books and an essay previously unavailable in book form are brought together in this new paperback edition. In The Human Condition McNeill provides a provocative interpretation of history as a competition of parasites, both biological and human. In The Great Frontier he questions the notion of "frontier freedom" through an examination of European expansion. The concluding essay speculates on the role of catastrophe in our lives. About The Human Condition: "A remarkable tour de force . . . . An elegant, intelligent and scholarly essay."--J. H. Hexter, The New York Times Book Review "A brilliant new interpretation of world history."--David Graber, The Los Angeles Times Book Review About The Great Frontier: There is virtually no one in the profession who can match McNeill as a synthesizer--or, for that matter, as an interdisciplinary historian. . . . There is more insight in this volume than in others of double or triple the length."--David Courtwright, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Justinian's Flea

Author: William Rosen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Miracle Cure and The Third Horseman, the epic story of the collision between one of nature's smallest organisms and history's mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.

Keeping Together in Time

Author: William H. McNeill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040872
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Could something as simple and seemingly natural as falling into step have marked us for evolutionary success? In Keeping Together in Time one of the most widely read and respected historians in America pursues the possibility that coordinated rhythmic movement--and the shared feelings it evokes--has been a powerful force in holding human groups together.As he has done for historical phenomena as diverse as warfare, plague, and the pursuit of power, William H. McNeill brings a dazzling breadth and depth of knowledge to his study of dance and drill in human history. From the records of distant and ancient peoples to the latest findings of the life sciences, he discovers evidence that rhythmic movement has played a profound role in creating and sustaining human communities. The behavior of chimpanzees, festival village dances, the close-order drill of early modern Europe, the ecstatic dance-trances of shamans and dervishes, the goose-stepping Nazi formations, the morning exercises of factory workers in Japan--all these and many more figure in the bold picture McNeill draws. A sense of community is the key, and shared movement, whether dance or military drill, is its mainspring. McNeill focuses on the visceral and emotional sensations such movement arouses, particularly the euphoric fellow-feeling he calls "muscular bonding." These sensations, he suggests, endow groups with a capacity for cooperation, which in turn improves their chance of survival. A tour de force of imagination and scholarship, Keeping Together in Time reveals the muscular, rhythmic dimension of human solidarity. Its lessons will serve us well as we contemplate the future of the human community and of our various local communities.