Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History - Kyle Harper

Written by Kyle Harper
Read by Tim Fannon
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
Release date: December 19, 2021
Duration: 19:47:42

A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs.

Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress.

He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life, as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population.

Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.

The book is highly praised by critics…Kirkus Reviews…
A survey of infectious disease as an agent in shaping human history. In a well-conceived, somewhat overlong example of what the renowned biologist E.O. Wilson calls consilience, classics professor Harper combs through the literature of history, economics, epidemiology, and other disciplines to deliver a solid study of the role of infectious disease in the human story… Until the 19th century, most people died of microbial diseases such as the bubonic plague and cholera, and only when societies set aside other priorities and performed such collective enterprises as draining swamps and installing sewers did the death toll fall and human life extend past 35 or so. –Though plague always manages to sneak back into the picture, as the recent pandemic has demonstrated. …. Harper ventures that we may in fact be weaker by virtue of having tamed so many epidemic diseases. Interestingly, he also locates the origins of many public health practices of today in the Middle Ages through institutions that grew as urban centers did. Harper’s long-view study is a welcome addition to the spate of recent books on epidemic disease