Title: Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

Author: Jonathan Kennedy

Publisher: Crown 2023

Genre: Nonfiction - History, Pandemics

Pages: 304

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Summer TBR

According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.

Drawing on the latest research in fields ranging from genetics and anthropology to archaeology and economics, Pathogenesis takes us through sixty thousand years of history, exploring eight major outbreaks of infectious disease that have made the modern world. Bacteria and viruses were protagonists in the demise of the Neanderthals, the growth of Islam, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the devastation wrought by European colonialism, and the evolution of the United States from an imperial backwater to a global superpower. Even Christianity rose to prominence in the wake of a series of deadly pandemics that swept through the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries: Caring for the sick turned what was a tiny sect into one of the world’s major religions.

By placing disease at the center of his wide-ranging history of humankind, Kennedy challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions about our collective past—and urges us to view this moment as another disease-driven inflection point that will change the course of history. Provocative and brimming with insight, Pathogenesistransforms our understanding of the human story.

A fascinating look at how pandemics have shaped the history of humanity. While I really enjoyed this book and would recommend to a lot of readers interested in the topic, I couldn’t give it 5 stars. Mostly, I felt like I was reviewing a ton of material that I had already learned. This is the problem with reading a ton of history books and epidemiology books. I probably know way to much to accurately judge a book like this. I did appreciated how Kennedy lays out some basic context for each of the time periods he discusses before showing the reader how a pandemic changed the situation. My favorite chapters were about the Paleolithic and Neolithic plagues. Probably because those were the two chapters that I learned the most from. Our collective understanding of those two time periods has greatly increased over the last 15 years. I am here for all the new information we have gleaned from skeletons and artifacts. Loved it! The rest of the book was a bit review for me, but I did enjoyed the refresher course.

Next up on the TBR pile: