A vivid, sweeping, and “fact-filled” (Booklist, starred review) history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease that “contextualizes the COVID-19 pandemic” (Publishers Weekly)—for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza.
For four thousand years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion—quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles—resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world.
However, our development has lately become precarious. Climate and population fluctuations and factors such as global trade have left us more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. Greater global cooperation toward sustainable health is urgently required—such as the international efforts to manufacture and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine—with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake.
“A timely, lucid look at the role of pandemics in history” (Kirkus Reviews), The Plague Cycle reveals the relationship between civilization, globalization, prosperity, and infectious disease over the past five millennia. It harnesses history, economics, and public health, and charts humanity’s remarkable progress, providing a fascinating and astute look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.
A New Statesman Book of the Year
Main Selection of both the History Book Club and the Science Book Club
“In his fact-filled and alarming overview of major infectious diseases past and present, economist Kenny discusses sources and vectors of epidemics, the toll of suffering and death, progress in controlling communicable diseases, and persistent problems.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Kenny contextualizes the Covid-19 pandemic...A worthy primer on a subject of pressing importance.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A brilliant exploration of what you might think is the most important topic of the year, but which Charles Kenny shows is the most important topic of the past five millennia. With clarity, depth, and wit, Kenny gives us the pandemic big picture.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of Enlightenment Now
“Engaging… provides a grand historical view of the critical role that disease has played in shaping human behavior and societies.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man
