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Plagues and Peoples
Free PDF Plagues and Peoples
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Amazon.com Review
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.
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From the Publisher
McNeill's highly acclaimed work is a brilliant and challenging account of the effects of disease on human history. His sophisticated analysis and detailed grasp of the subject make this book fascinating reading. By the author of The Rise Of The West.
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Product details
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (1976)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780385121224
ISBN-13: 978-0385121224
ASIN: 0385121229
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.1 out of 5 stars
106 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#108,090 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This book is great! If you are interested in the evolutionary history of humans and their parasites, this is the book for you. It was exciting, revealing, educational, as well as appropriately ghoulish when describing the great plagues of recorded history, especially "Justinian's Plague" (6th century) and the Great Plague of the 14th century. His comparison between our micro-parasites (bacteria, worms, viruses) and our "macro-parasites" (governments, armies ,raiders, plunderers) was a particularly thought-provoking aspect of the book.Not for the faint of heart.
There does seem to be a correlation between the years that a writer immerses her or himself in the subject matter and the sheer number of sources cited. And then there are those writers that expand their own horizons and encompass and become proficient in many different subjects. Well, this book was deftly written by a writer of history that has also become proficient in biology. There's simply no other way to come up with the wonderfully focused hypothesis that there are not only microparasites in the environment, but also macroparasites such as governments and, well, business and real estate owners. It is our job to try to successfully negotiate our lives while keeping both forms at bay. In the past, however, and I'm talking from around 500 BC to near-present, microparasites weren't known about. When the plague--termed Pasturella pestis in the book instead of the more typically named Yrsinia pestis today--occurred it wasn't known to be a microparasite. No, it was blamed on many things, god, Jews, sin, any scapegoat really, until around 1850 in some places, though even today you'll find misdirection in knowledgeless pockets.What is more, the author took great pains to research how often and what impact microparasite had on the course of human history, flushing out the 100s of times it occured in China alone from recorded history in 320 or so BC, based upon the work of Joseph Cha. So maybe many of the wars that were won by the few over the many were done so because the many were already being microparasitized and couldn't defend themselves. Too, the real winner has been the microparasites, having killed far more than any war, though they killed mostly when introduced to a population that hadn't seen them before, for a "proper" parasite will learn to not kill in order to best survive. And that is where we are today, at an equilibrium of population with both macro and microparasites, thanks no doubt to medical science enabling our uneasy relationship.Highly recommended... - lc
The thesis of the book is quite interesting. Occasionally, some of the postulations and historical facts engage you.But overall, this book is in dire need of a better editor. I read a lot of heavier nonfiction and understand that such topics won’t read like fiction. Even so, this was hard to read. I rarely ever quit on a book but seriously considered doing so about 50 pages in. Thankfully, the last 3/4 of the book are better.
In this 1976 work, acclaimed historian William McNeill investigated the role of parasitism (both micro in the form of disease and macro in the form of rulers and governments) on the rise and fall of historical societies. To say that "Plagues and Peoples" was a success would be a monumental understatement as almost all subsequent discussions of the role of disease in history start from here. In discussing the way in which epidemics begin, run through a population and then may become a part of a series of non-lethal but persistent childhood diseases, McNeill arrives at a paradigm that fundamentally alters the way in which epidemiology is seen historically. In short, this work was and still is revolutionary.The biggest drawback of the book is the style in which it is written. The text is written in the way in which a scholar might have communicated with interested colleagues outside of the typical discourse one might find in scholarly journals. As such, the language is somewhat geared towards the specialist and the text assumes the reader has at least a passing familiarity with the broader historical context of the societies the author is discussing. While this isn't as much of a problem for the discussions about epidemics affecting the west, there is a good bit of material about China, India, the Middle East and Africa (though less so in the last three). Also, the chapters are often rather long and span several thematic ideas which would likely have been separated into separate chapters had the book been written to more recent editorial guidelines. This makes the book a bit of tough sledding at times as it can tend to bog down with the sheer weight of the information being presented and a lack of a narrative thread at times.For me, the most compelling discussion was the effect of the introduction of Old World diseases into the New World. The mortality statistics are stunning and offer a chilling prediction of what might happen if a disease to which there is little resistance is released into a modern urbanized setting.I recommend this book to any student of history, epidemiology or sociology. Be prepared to push through some dense text but you will definitely be rewarded for your perseverance.
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