He mentions many diseases but talks alot of the Black Plague, claiming it had come from rodents in the steppes of Eurasia. There is an updated version from 1997. If you read "Plagues and Peoples" with this thesis in mind, it is a very interesting book. Jared Diamond’s book is also written in a more interesting manner. A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm. The plague response also has a potential lesson for today’s policy makers. When the opportunistic structure gets too greedy, it may overwhelm the host. At the macro level, high disease rates in cities played a major role in millennia of urban-rural interactions. The changing pattern of epidemic infection, referred to by MCNeill as the “Domestication of disease,” brought about by global exploration and trade between 1300 and 1700 marked a watershed in human history that enabled uninterrupted population growth that had previously been thwarted at intervals by massive disease-caused die-offs. Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2018. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. You can still see all customer reviews for the product. This was one of the most compelling books I have ever read. With time and familiarity, host and parasite usually come to an uneasy alliance, which allows the survival of each. When different cultures first came into contact, there were often terrible outbreaks at their borders—this happened throughout Eurasia as agriculture and cities spread across the continent. I consider this to be the seminal text as to its frightening subject matter and its impact on human history. The book is a tough read. In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. Is there an updated version of this? Index. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. McNeill's global history of infectious disease and its effect on the political destinies of men is built on a stunning analogy: the microparasitism of viruses and bacteria—carriers of typhoid, malaria, et al.—is intimately bound up with the macroparasitism of human predators, be they Chinese warlords, Roman soldiers, or Spanish conquistadors. 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. McNeil leaves no corner of the globe untouched: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand are all covered. Nothing escapes McNeill's reckoning: the Hindu caste system; the impetus epidemics gave to early Christianity which stressed the evanescence of human life and—no small matter—the nursing and care of the sick; the lethal blow which the advent of the bubonic plague in 14th-century Europe dealt to the rational theology of Acquinas; the "disease barrier" which until the 19th century kept the technologically advanced "macroparasites" of European imperialism from effective penetration of Africa. Now, there are numerous works that look at disease in a, This book is a really important one, but it's been so foundational that this piece has been eclipsed by numerous others. This is one reason why contact with Europeans and their animals hit so hard. To be sure the scanty and often indecipherable medical writings of the ancient world force McNeill to rely on a great deal of speculation, deduction, and even guesswork. William McNeill's own son, John McNeill, has followed in his father's footsteps by producing, McNeill in this seminal volume offers a very interesting and informative overview of the past interactions and continuing interactions between so-called "macroparasitism"--that is, predation of man upon man--and "microparasitism"--the relation between tribes or nations of men and the organisms in their microenvironment. A good book for today but needing to be updated. The 1918 flu pandemic is given a fraction of the coverage in standard textbooks as the First World War, even though the former caused more casualties. Angela Logomasini He mentions many diseases but talks alot of the Black Plague, claiming it had come from rodents in the steppes of Eurasia. 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One of a series of ground breaking books looking at history from the epidemiological, economic, agricultural perspective. If you are interested in the evolutionary history of humans and their parasites, this is the book for you. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. McNeill's evidence demonstrates that historically, plagues have taken their most lethal form when they find a virgin population which has had no previous exposure and has not been able to develop antibodies. Tit-for-tat. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author.