A vivid, sweeping history of mankind's battles with infectious
disease, 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 aspects of our prosperity 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 harvest a Covid-19
vaccine--with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake.
Written as colorful history, 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 timely look at the cyclical nature of infectious
disease.
