Plagues and Peoples
by William H. McNeill
List Price:
Our Price: $8.88
You Save: $8.12 (48%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.81 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: William H. McNeillEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1976
ISBN: 0385121229
Number of pages: 340
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Plagues and Peoples
Book Review: Fascinating look at the influence of disease on history
Summary: 5 Stars
_Plagues and Peoples_ by William H. McNeill is an absolutely brilliant work of history; though originally published in 1977 it is still insightful and influential. Just as Brian Fagan in _The Long Summer_ viewed human history through the prism of climatic change, McNeill in this work showed how the world got to be the way it is in large part thanks to disease. How the various communities of humans in the world came to an accommodation with those infectious diseases that were able to reach epidemic proportions, when and whether or not a disease went from a being epidemic to endemic (milder, generally a childhood disease) in a given population, was a major factor in world history and one that was often overlooked. According to McNeill, for too long the role of infectious disease in world history has not been properly taken into account, historians for many decades viewing epidemics as "accidents" and infection (and fear of infection) often having been treated as "unpredictable" and "incomprehensible," as disease "spoiled the web of interpretation and explanation" that historians used to understand the human experience. McNeill sought to chronicle man's history with infectious disease and the far-reaching consequences that resulted when contacts across disease boundaries allowed a new infection to invade a population that had no acquired immunity to its effects. The contemporary global diffusion of childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, and until recently smallpox took thousands of years, a history well covered in this book.
It was due to a near lack of disease that humanity was able to multiple vastly between 40,000 and 10,000 B.C; as humans left the tropical environment of Africa, it left behind not only diseases that were endemic to the environment that had kept mankind in check but additionally moved into non-tropical environments that were not as benign for many parasites (McNeill often referred to infectious diseases as microparasites or simply parasites). The biological checks on humankind in sub-Saharan Africa were absent in temperate and northern climates, with lower temperatures and oftentimes drier conditions inimical to many parasites and with fewer organisms present to become possible parasites.
Unfortunately, humanity began to reverse this relative lack of disease with the advent of agriculture. By multiplying a restricted number of species - both animal and human- dense concentrations of potential food for parasites were created. Weed species arose to fill in the gaps created by such huge distortions in normal ecological systems. Many weeds - such as plant weeds and mice - were relatively easy to control, but microorganisms for centuries defied understanding and control. Most if not all of these microorganisms jumped to humans from livestock, and as parasites that pass directly from human to human with no intermediate host and indeed cannot survive without a large pool of non-immune humans, are "rank newcomers" in terms of the evolution of life on Earth. These diseases are the hallmarks of civilization.
The "domestication" of disease that occurred between 1300 and 1700 was a major landmark in world history, the direct result of two great transportation revolutions, one on land initiated by the Mongols and one on sea initiated by the Europeans during the age of exploration. When diseases first appear they are often spectacularly fatal, so lethal that it is possible for a microorganism to die out locally or even completely. Only after a period of time has passed can hosts and parasites adjust to one another, as the disease becomes a normal, endemic, more or less stable part of civilized society, a relationship less destructive to human hosts and more secure for the parasites, the latter able to count on a fresh supply of susceptible children to infect. Only with continued exposure can a population hope to develop this balance, as older individuals acquire immunity to the disease, reinforced by repeated exposure. Paradoxically, the more diseased a community, the less destructive are its epidemics, as adults are less likely to die, adults being more difficult to replace then infants and more damaging to society when they do perish. The more communications spread between Europe, North America, and the rest of the world, the smaller became the chance of any really devastating disease encounter. Only a radical mutation of an existing disease-causing organism or a new transfer from some other host to humans offered the possibility of any devastating epidemic as the world became one disease pool. Former separate disease pools, once separated by major geographical barriers - mountains, deserts, and oceans - converged into one disease pool as no large group of humans remained isolated from the rest of humanity by the end of the 19th century. To McNeill, a disease regime that he called modern existed only after "endemicity" spread throughout the world, first from port city to port city and then filtering into rural towns and the countryside. It was only after the endemicity of the major childhood diseases - their domestication - occurred that population growth really began to occur worldwide, that cities no longer needed a constant influx of rural migrants to replace large numbers of deaths each year (amazingly this only happened finally in 1900).
In addition to the history of disease and its effects other related topics are covered, such as the development of modern urban sewer systems (thanks in large part to cholera), how changes in agricultural practices affected disease propagation and spread (ironically while many diseases spread from cattle to humans it was the presence of large number of cattle that interrupted the chain of malarial transmission in much of Europe), the advent of modern doctors, acceptance of the germ theory of disease, and the development of vaccines. It was very interesting to learn that Edward Jenner did not invent vaccination; while his role was very important, smallpox inoculation at a folk level existed for hundreds of years in Arabia, North Africa, Persia, India, and China. Also the coverage of bubonic plague, leprosy, and syphilis is especially good in this book, the sections on it making for fascinating reading.
Summary of Plagues and Peoples
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.
No small themes for historian William McNeill: he is a writer of big, sweeping books, from The Rise of the West to The History of the World. Plagues and Peoples considers the influence of infectious diseases on the course of history, and McNeill pays special attention to the Black Death of the 13th and 14th centuries, which killed millions across Europe and Asia. (At one point, writes McNeill, 10,000 people in Constantinople alone were dying each day from the plague.) With the new crop of plagues and epidemics in our own time, McNeill's quiet assertion that "in any effort to understand what lies ahead the role of infectious disease cannot properly be left out of consideration" takes on new significance.
Health, Mind & Body Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Health, Mind & Body Books
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Viewby Stanley Milgram
Harpercollins; Published: 1974-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $532.97
Emily's Reasons Why Not: A Novelby Carrie Gerlach
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2005-05-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Truth & Beautyby Ann Patchett
HarperAudio; Published: 2004-05-11; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $3.27
Price in other shops:
She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Womanby Ian Kerner
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2009-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.06
Price in other shops:
My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderersby Helen Morrison, Harold Goldberg
William Morrow; Published: 2004-05-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.96
Price in other shops:
Nutrition: Science and Applicationsby Lori A. Smolin
Harcourt College Pub; Published: 1996-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $30.50
Price in other shops:
Complete Idiot's Guide to Throwing a Great Partyby Patty Sachs, Phyllis Cambria
Alpha; Published: 2000-10-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.10
Price in other shops:
Complete Idiot's Guide to Walking for Healthby Erika Peters
Alpha; Published: 2001-02-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $48.97
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Stressby Jeffrey P.; Davidson, Jeff Davidson
Macmillan Distribution; Published: 1996; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.33
Diving-Bell and the Butterflyby Jean-Dominique Bauby
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2002-05-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.01
Similar Books and other products
The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in Historyby Donald R. Hopkins
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 2002-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.96
Price in other shops:
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDSby Elizabeth Pisani
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2009-09-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.71
Price in other shops:
The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)by William Bynum
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2008-08-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.33
Price in other shops:
A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford World's Classics)by Daniel Defoe, Louis Landa, David Roberts
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2010-10-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.93
Price in other shops:
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern Worldby Steven Johnson
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2007-10-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazisby Robert Proctor
Harvard University Press; Published: 1988-09-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Lifeby Nancy Tomes
Harvard University Press; Published: 1999-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Studies in Environment and History)by Alfred W. Crosby
Cambridge University Press; Published: 2004-01-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.99
Price in other shops:
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in Historyby John M. Barry
Penguin Audio; Penguin Books; Published: 2005-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our Historyby Dorothy H. Crawford
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.10
Price in other shops: