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Available
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Publication
Anchor (1998), Edition: Updated, Paperback, 368 pages
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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member heidilove
an insightful look at how the most important things we export and import are sometimes the least visible or intended.
LibraryThing member elmiller
I began reading this knowing it would cover topics that interested me in [Guns, Germs, and Steel] and wasn't disappointed. The book covers mankind's encounters with disease from prehistory to the 20th century. I was especially interested in how he discusses macroparasitism in addition to
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microparasitism. The latter is very familiar to us, while the former may be something many of us have never consciously thought about. McNeill explains that in the same that parasites strike a balance with their hosts in which neither kills the other off too quickly, civilizations and social classes that prey upon the labor and resources of others must too be mindful of not taking too much and depriving them of resources needed to survive. He maintains this concept throughout much of the book, though I was a little disappointed he abandons the concept somewhat as he approaches modern history. Still, the book will encourage many readers to see history in a new light. Show Less
LibraryThing member Voracious_Reader
Plagues and Peoples is a good but very slow read. Firstly, I don't generally have to look up so many words while reading. I have a doctorate, but I couldn't claim to know (without some serious parsing of latinate and germanic roots) what pollulate, schistosomiasis, and ungulate mean. By the way,
The first half wasn't nearly as interesting as the second. Perhaps, that's because the first half concentrated on Asian History with which I have little familiarity. My facility is with Western History and writings. Still, the book was well-written by a person with an extraordinary sense of the "big picture." It contained sustained thoughts and themes that carried through to the end (which many history books fail to do). There were many interesting tidbits in it, like the idea that without small-pox the Spaniards would have had a difficult time conquering the New World and how Moslem politics and bigotry kept that culture from mimicking "Christian practices" that would have kept them safe from disease. It's a keeper.
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pollulate means to sprout; schistosomiasis means infestation with or disease caused by an elogated tremotode worm; and ungulate means hoofed herbivore. I fully understand that a book about diseases will contain the scientific names of those diseases. But this tried so hard to be erudite that it went overboard in its use of large and seldom used words. Thumbs up for this historical essay--it was a challenge. The first half wasn't nearly as interesting as the second. Perhaps, that's because the first half concentrated on Asian History with which I have little familiarity. My facility is with Western History and writings. Still, the book was well-written by a person with an extraordinary sense of the "big picture." It contained sustained thoughts and themes that carried through to the end (which many history books fail to do). There were many interesting tidbits in it, like the idea that without small-pox the Spaniards would have had a difficult time conquering the New World and how Moslem politics and bigotry kept that culture from mimicking "Christian practices" that would have kept them safe from disease. It's a keeper.
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LibraryThing member Gold_Gato
Civilized diseases. This is the book that first alerted me to the way some germs and viruses have altered human history, much as pigeons have become a part of our daily environment. As we have developed the previously virgin landscape of the world, we have unwittingly unleashed the microbes intent
McNeill also looks at how different sectors of humanity handled the constant scourges. While Western Europe became more superstitious, the Moslems were somewhat more enlightened:
When you learn that epidemic disease exists in a county, do not go there; but if it breaks out in the county where you are, do not leave.
Book Season = Winter (when you're shivering with the flu)
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on destroying us. Tit-for-tat. Throw in the 'peoples' element, such as Roman legionnaires turning on their own communities or Mongols burning villages and their occupants into ashes, and one wonders why we are still here.McNeill also looks at how different sectors of humanity handled the constant scourges. While Western Europe became more superstitious, the Moslems were somewhat more enlightened:
When you learn that epidemic disease exists in a county, do not go there; but if it breaks out in the county where you are, do not leave.
Book Season = Winter (when you're shivering with the flu)
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
An academic (lots of endnotes, mostly consisting of cites of other writings), rather dry, somewhat outdated book - that remains fascinating. It's outdated in that it was written in the mid-70s, and many of the theories the author puts forth as wild possibilities...are now simply accepted fact.
It is relatively dry and academic - McNeill makes no effort to dramatize events (they're dramatic enough, thank you), or talk down to non-scientists/historians/biologists. He merely states the facts, and the conclusions he draws from them; if the facts are insufficient for solid support of a theory, he says so and why and if it's likely there will ever be such data or not (mostly not. Detailed information on epidemics before and during the Dark Ages in Europe, for instance, is lacking and probably always will be). I learned a lot, he made me think, and unlike several recent books I've read this is one I think I'd enjoy rereading in a year or two.
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Everyone knows that the diseases the Spanish brought with them were a major factor in the ease with which Cortez and Pizarro conquered the Aztecs and Incans - but this author, and this book, were the sources of that notion in the first place. And so on. There are other theories he puts forth, which are equally reasonable although supported by less data, which are not (yet) accepted as standard - but given the way one theory solidified, I'm inclined to believe the others. Concepts such as - the reason the history of civilization has been city-states expanding their power into fringe areas is (partly, he explicitly states it's not the only factor) because cities breed diseases that isolated villages can't handle - so everyone from Ur, to Rome, to the 16th- and 17th-century colonists, were moving into areas devastated by an epidemic spread by the presence of city folk. Or...the current (as of the 70s, though it's still going) surge of population growth throughout the world, unprecedented in history, is largely because between vaccines and sanitation we've eliminated many of the epidemic diseases that used to keep population down. For that matter, it was only in the 1800s, according to McNeill, that cities stopped being population sinks - they used to need a constant inflow of immigrants from the surrounding lands just to keep their populations at the same level, because between infections and lack of sanitation a lot more people died in cities. So shantytowns are a new phenomenon - at least, long-term ones - because previously there were always gaps that could be filled by immigrants; now city folk are more than replacing themselves, and the immigrants from the surrounding farmland have no places to fill. And...lots more. I read with two bookmarks, one where I was reading and one at the corresponding endnote; many of the endnotes are literally just a mention of what page in what book was drawn on for this comment, but some of them add considerable enlightenment.It is relatively dry and academic - McNeill makes no effort to dramatize events (they're dramatic enough, thank you), or talk down to non-scientists/historians/biologists. He merely states the facts, and the conclusions he draws from them; if the facts are insufficient for solid support of a theory, he says so and why and if it's likely there will ever be such data or not (mostly not. Detailed information on epidemics before and during the Dark Ages in Europe, for instance, is lacking and probably always will be). I learned a lot, he made me think, and unlike several recent books I've read this is one I think I'd enjoy rereading in a year or two.
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LibraryThing member DanelMaddison
Classic, but no doubt dates (1976) study of the effect of disease on human history. Suffice to say it opened my eyes to an aspect of history that I failed to pick up at college (Cornell U. --- but maybe I wasn't taking the right classes or exploring the right sections of the school library.)
LibraryThing member fundevogel
Well it's been nearly a month since I finished this so it's probably time. This book, written in the 70's, is a pretty academic look at the historical relationship between humans and disease, specifically how great an impact each has in shaping the other's history. This ought to be at least
McNeill's focus is the so called civilized diseases. Things like smallpox, cholera, mumps and such. These diseases, he explains, cannot exist without civilization as all those infected either die or gain immunity. Without a large enough pool of unexposed people regularly coming in contact with infected persons the diseases burn themselves out for lack of hosts. So you see, none of these diseases could exist without humans first supplying a nice nest. Further, humans and civilized diseases evolve together. A human community's first exposure to a civilized disease is invariably extreme. The community his no immunity whether it be imposed by former survivors or social controls and the book references many such catastrophic events on all continents. But from there the disease and it's hosts start to find an equalibrium. The most virulent strains of the disease are burned out by their self-defeating deathtoll allowing the human population to adapt socially and biologically to milder strains. Of course it still sucks, but that's basically how it went until vaccines came around.
Honestly the book is a bit macro for my tastes. My eyes sort of glaze over at troop movement-type history and as you're reading about the trade routes and armies that transported diseases around the world it feels pretty troop movement-y. There is very little discussion of the character of diseases discussed, but McNeill does do an excellent job of illustrating just how much more disease there was in everyday life prior to modern medicine and what that meant to a scientifically naive populous. Basically everyone lived their lives having seen plenty of sudden and unpredictable death from disease. You could literally be totally fine one day and dead the next (seriously, cholera will fuck you) and you get the impression it left people pretty fatalistic. All in all it's solidly in the category of "read this to get a better picture of the shit people had to deal with before you were alive and thank your fucking stars you don't have to."
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superficially familiar as it's become widely accepted that the European conquest of the Americas was pretty much ensured by the catestrophic death toll of European diseases on native populations. Such loss of life often left survivors too few too maintain their civilizations and appeared to be a sign of the divine abandoning them to side with the Europeans.McNeill's focus is the so called civilized diseases. Things like smallpox, cholera, mumps and such. These diseases, he explains, cannot exist without civilization as all those infected either die or gain immunity. Without a large enough pool of unexposed people regularly coming in contact with infected persons the diseases burn themselves out for lack of hosts. So you see, none of these diseases could exist without humans first supplying a nice nest. Further, humans and civilized diseases evolve together. A human community's first exposure to a civilized disease is invariably extreme. The community his no immunity whether it be imposed by former survivors or social controls and the book references many such catastrophic events on all continents. But from there the disease and it's hosts start to find an equalibrium. The most virulent strains of the disease are burned out by their self-defeating deathtoll allowing the human population to adapt socially and biologically to milder strains. Of course it still sucks, but that's basically how it went until vaccines came around.
Honestly the book is a bit macro for my tastes. My eyes sort of glaze over at troop movement-type history and as you're reading about the trade routes and armies that transported diseases around the world it feels pretty troop movement-y. There is very little discussion of the character of diseases discussed, but McNeill does do an excellent job of illustrating just how much more disease there was in everyday life prior to modern medicine and what that meant to a scientifically naive populous. Basically everyone lived their lives having seen plenty of sudden and unpredictable death from disease. You could literally be totally fine one day and dead the next (seriously, cholera will fuck you) and you get the impression it left people pretty fatalistic. All in all it's solidly in the category of "read this to get a better picture of the shit people had to deal with before you were alive and thank your fucking stars you don't have to."
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LibraryThing member renardkitsune
Plagues and Peoples is a very good read. It can be a bit academic in its word choice and aims, but if it was one of the first books to claim that disease had a major impact in politics and demography throughout history as McNeil claims, it is truly a seminal work. I had a bit of a feeling like I
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would have been more blown away by it if I had read it in the seventies, and it perhaps has lost a bit of it’s “wow” factor, but it is a good read despite that. A couple of reviews have compared it to Guns, Germs and Steel, and I couldn’t help to as well. I read Jared Diamond’s work first, and I can’t help that think that Plagues and Peoples was a springboard for his ideas. Diamond’s work is more accessible to a wider audience, but Plagues and Peoples drills down into a specific subject. There are a lot of references to flip to in the back. The book reads fine without flipping back to them, but I enjoyed reading the extra notes. Show Less
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Awards
Language
Original publication date
1976
Physical description
368 p.; 6.9 inches
ISBN
0385121229 / 9780385121224