Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
The history of disease is the history of humankind: an interpretation of the world as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. "A book of the first importance, a truly revolutionary work." --The New Yorker
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, Plagues and Peoples is "a brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews). Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter was added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his introduction to this edition.
Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is essential reading--that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening.
Synopsis
Plagues and Peoples is historian William McNeill's classic and radical interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact -- political, demographic, ecological, and psychological -- that disease has had on human history. 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. Today, with the proliferation of AIDS since the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle, and McNeill explores this frightening phenomenon in a new introduction.
With more than 100,000 copies in print, Plagues and Peoples has truly become a seminal work. Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, it is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, and as intriguing as it is enlightening.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-329) and index.