Plagues and Peoples

Plagues and Peoples
by: William Hardy McNeill (Author)
Publisher:Anchor Press/Doubleday
Edition:First Edition
Publication Date: January 1, 1976
Language:English
Print Length:371 pages
ISBN-10:0385112564
ISBN-13:9780385112567
Book 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.
About the Author
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.