Plagues and Peoples
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List Price: $24.95
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Written By: William H. McNeill
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Binding: Library Binding
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.49
EAN: 9781439503133
ISBN: 1439503133
Number Of Pages: 340
Publication Date: 2008-06-26
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Editorial Reviews for Plagues and Peoples
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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.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Foundational Study of Parasitism
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good book great price
Comment: This is a very interesting book it makes you think about the role diseases have played to make the worlds human populations come to exist as they do. I started reading it after I read the book guns germs and steel by jared diamond and both of these books are great and cover different aspect of disease. I am not completely done with the book but I am already planning on rereading it as there is so much interesting information that I think it is worth reading again in a few months.
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Summary: Bio-Materialist History
Comment: Other reviews have captured the breadth of this powerful and provoking analysis; I can't add anything more. However, one unoticed aspect is how McNeill silently engages with Marx's economic materialist analysis by showing before you can have a base, let alone a superstructure, you must have control of or a standoff with infectious diseases. Thus in some ways, his dialectical interplay between macro- and micro- parasitism is in fact even more "radical" than Marx, if "radical' is used in the original sense (to get at the root). What is disappointing is that nobody has followed up since using McNeill's fertile insights.
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Summary: Amazing How a Few Invisible Germs Changed the World
Comment: The main thesis of William McNeill's "Plagues and People" is that disease states and the general health of various regions of the world throughout history have shaped social practices, religious thinking and political structures -- even leading to the rise and fall of entire civilizations.
MacNeill's startling, well-defended claims are fascinating, eminently quotable and worthy of re-reading. For example, the Greeks cultivated olives and grapes, which require little manual labor. Their olive oil and wine was a valuable currency around the ancient world, saving their island from the terrible scourges of disease suffered by isolated, overworked agrarian societies without urban-honed immunological defenses. He goes so far as to say that this gave the Greeks the freedom to create their highly developed culture and unparalleled psychological insights.
McNeill's august text has influenced many other scholars, but the lay reader will find this romp through history, well, infectiously entertaining. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Bugs, germs and parasites
Comment: Long before Jared Diamond captured headlines and dominated bestseller lists with 'Gun, Germs and Steel," the distinguished University of Chicago historian William McNeill published "Plagues and Peoples" that carried a similar message, albeit heavily focused on the "germs" part of the equation.
McNeill's central thesis is that bacteriology has had a profound impact on the course of human history and will continue to be a fundamental component of human affairs forever. In short, communicable disease can never be fully defeated. As human population continues to grow and as technology and social revolutions change our behavior and modes of interaction, micro parasites will exploit the new opportunities to infect and kills us. He argues that humans and micro parasites have been engaged in nearly continuous combat for advantage since human beings first left the cradle of civilization in Africa.
In making this argument, McNeill offers up an interesting explanation for Africa's pitiful condition up to the present day. He claims that humans developed in the heat and moisture of the African climate and over time an ecological balance developed between man and micro parasite. The well-established micro parasitic infections were nature's way of ensuring that no one species dominated. It was only when humans discovered clothing and began moving to colder climates that did not so easily support traditional disease did the battle for primacy between man and bug begin. McNeill states that even today Africa is an example of a well functioning ecological balance where the tsetse fly and the sleeping sickness it carries, for instance, still determines the range where humans can penetrate.
McNeill stresses that the history of disease is more than simply the story of epidemics and consequent die-off of large swaths of a population. He shows that micro parasites have touched a broad spectrum of human behavior and cultural development. For instance, he argues that today's major world religions, especially Christianity and Hinduism, thrived in the epidemic disease experiences of the first century AD. Those religions provided some explanation to the apparent randomness of sudden death from a variety of ailments and it offered the hope of salvation and eternal life after death. Moreover, McNeill argues that epidemic diseases that leveled Aztec and Incan culture accelerated the acceptance of Christianity in the New World by the native population. After all, what clearer sign of the power of the European God than the immunity of the white men from the diseases that swept through the vulnerable native communities.
McNeill also demonstrates how fear of disease - particularly the global cholera outbreak of the 1830s that killed so quickly and horribly - promoted massive public health programs that eventually had a tremendous impact on industrial and economic growth. The improved sanitary conditions allowed cities to flourish and workers to remain healthy and productive. He also argues that an army's ability to conquer disease in its ranks was likely more important than its ability to conquer its enemy in open combat. Until the 20th century, the vast majority of deaths in war were the result of disease, sometimes accounting for over tens times the combat deaths. The army that could prevent such devastation had an incredible advantage.
The major breakthrough for humans, McNeill argues, was the period 1300-1700. That four century period witnessed two critical transportation revolutions: the Eurasian land route developed by the Mongols and the European-led sea-based transportation. The relatively rapid dissemination of people meant the rapid dissemination of disease. The homogenization of disease between Europe, the Middle East, India and China led to the "domestication" of epidemic disease and marked a fundamental breakthrough in world history. This interaction led many diseases to transition from crippling epidemics to manageable endemics that took the form of childhood diseases; the same diseases that decimated the New World native populations when they were exposed in the 16th century.
Lastly, it is interesting to read how long it took humans to understand how disease was spread. The fact that germs are invisible obviously played a central role in their ability to survive. But just as importantly were the different varieties of contagion that confounded the ability to explain the spread of the illness. Because some diseases are spread by human contact, such as tuberculosis and small pox, and others by insects, such as the flea for bubonic plague and the mosquito for malaria and yellow fever, while others are spread by contaminated food and water, such as cholera, no simply solution seemed to work.
After reading "Plagues and Peoples" it is difficult to see world history the same as before. Modern scholars have poked a variety of holes in McNeill's arguments but the central thesis that bacteria and viruses have often been the causative agents of technological, social and political upheaval is difficult to refute.
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