Plagues and Peoples

Looked at from the point of view of other organisms, humankind therefore resembles an acute epidemic disease, whose occasional lapses into less virulent forms of behavior have never sufficed to permit any really stable, chronic relationship to establish itself. It is risky to write a book like th......more

Written in 1975 and revised in 1997, Plagues and People remains an ambitious, timely study of the impact of disease on the course of world history. Historian William McNeil posits that two forces micro-parasitism and macro-parasitism are behind the emergence of plagues. Micro-parasitism refers to a......more

Being a macabre sort of person I had added this to my To Read list before covid was even a water droplet in a sneeze above Wuhan. I had also read Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe which was a study of how the Roman Empire was brought to its knees by an outbreak of the plague,......more

This book was alright. The author knows his stuff and he's very informative. Most of his conclusions are reasonable, and he provides a fresh look at history that his contemporaries have not accounted for. However, I hold several reservations concerning his guesswork where information was lacking. McN......more

There are times where our collective ego as a species is a bit blown out of proportion. An example of this was the early presumption before the evidently shocking discoveries of Jane Goodall that some other animals can use tools. But of course, none have created combustion engines aside from us. In......more