Customer Reviews

Armies of Pestilence: The Effects of Pandemics on History

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bray has obviously done a lot or research for this book. He knows his diseases and his history; unfortunately, he has a bit of trouble writing. The grammar is at times appalling. Here is one of many examples:
"During the Thirty Years War Germany lost half of its population mostly to typhus and the consequent demographic collapse of Central Europe in the seventeenth-century delayed any substantial recovery from the decline already caused by the Black Death and postponed the recovery of Germany until the rise of Prussia." No, I did not leave out any punctuation; it is a 50 word sentence with zero commas or semicolons. I'm normally not very anal about things like this, but it happens so often as to detract from the message.

His reliance on primarily secondary sources is troublesome. I would prefer to hear why a certain author is wrong based on the primary source evidence. He has a tendency to list statistics, which are no doubt important but need to be introduced in a manner that is readable and understandable.

I would not recommend this book to someone looking for an introduction to disease history; however, if you are well-versed in general history and already know a bit about diseases, you will find it worth a read.

While the book was informative, it was full of grammatical errors, spelling errors, punctuation errors, and paragraphs that were so poorly written they didn't make sense. There were so many mistakes, it was distracting. Many times there were five and six errors on one page.

Plain and simple the subject matter in this book is absolutely fascinating. The essential format of the book is going back and analyzing known historical pandemic outbreaks of disease, using deductive reasoning to identify the assailant, assessing the historical impact and consequence of the outbreak.

This book gets 5 stars for subject matter and historicity. But I give the book only 1 star for writing style and its ability to keep your interest. I have a very strong science background and this book was very difficult to finish simply because the author did not make it particularly interesting (IMHO). He relied way too much on quotes and citing the observances of other historians, unfortunately the book ends up being very dry. However the authors understanding of history, disease and facts is excellent. He obviously knows his subject matter very well.

I will admit that I have not yet finished this book, so my analysis is a bit incomplete. So far I have found that the book is very informative, but very hard to read (and this is coming from an english/history major!). Bray obviously knows his stuff, but instead of stating his own theses and hyptheses, he just overquotes other authors. He does say at the beginning of the book that he used mostly secondary sources, but he cites so many other authors that you start to lose what it is HE is saying. I would have liked for him to take all his sources and come up with an independent analysis based on them (a basic research paper writing rule). Also, he operates under the assumption that there are certain historical events that the reader should know (Roman battles, etc.) - I would have liked him to have spent some time "setting the scene". Bray also alludes to things without explaining them - in the first chapter he states that Hale (one of the many quoted authors) based one of his theories on "a cuneiform tablet". But Bray doesn't say any more about it. Does this tablet still exist? What does it say on it? Does the tablet require interpretation or is it straightforward? These are the things I like to know. I will say that the book is a good starting point - but if you want to really learn more about this subject, you are either going to have to do a LOT of independent research (which is what I am doing) or take a look at another book written on the topic.

This book discusses seven diseases (Plague, Malaria, Yellow Fever, Small Pox, Typhus, Cholera and Influenza) and their impact on history. Each section begins with a discussion of the biology of the disease, followed by chapters that discuss its historical impact. The author is a biologist, so it should be no surprise that I found the biology sections to be the best part of the book.

I characterize this book as being academic. Much of the book is taken up by discussions of the literature and where different experts disagree, resulting in an academic and somewhat dry presentation of this material. However, if you are primarily interested in some specific details and you want references to seek out further information, then this might be a four star book.

The book discusses not only impacts on European history, but also in that of the Middle East, India, China and the Americas. I found many interesting discussions of the aspects of behavior of the diseases. I was interested in the discussion of the influence of Plague type (Bubonic, Pneumonic or Septicaemic) on the rate of transmission of the Plague and the possibility of land transmission over long distances. I liked the discussion of the different types of Malaria, the different types of mosquitoes that could carry each, and how this impacted the possible types of Malaria that could be present in a given area at a given time. There was a nice discussion of the 1976 swine flu inoculation program. While I liked these aspects of the book and many others, I found this to be balanced by the dry writing style that made me want to race through parts of the book. This is definitely not the type of book that imparts information by telling exciting stories.

I was given this book as a gift. I just want that to be up front lest anyone think I would actually spend money on this. The grammar and punctuation are horrible, making the book barely readable, and though the author has obviously done his homework on disease throughout history, several of his statements are glaringly wrong. His brazen claim that malnutrition has no effect on the immune system and susceptibility to infectious disease should have been removed from the book by a discerning editor. However, it is obvious that his editor either did not read the book or did not care about the discrepancies.

This book was very informative about the impact of disease on history, but failed to take into account the various things which can contribute to disease. It was also very poorly written. With statements like (and bear in mind, this is supposed to be written by an academic) "The nutritionists proclaim that it is axiomatic that malnutrition of itself at least increased the number suffering from an infectious disease in any given population. I wish they would prove it as I am inclined to believe it is sometimes true, but until they do so the case is 'not proven'."

As Goethe has told us, there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity. As for his vastly uninformed opinion on the lack of malnutrition's importance in the spread of infectious disease, I wish he would prove it.

Once again an author has told us the story of how our ancestors lived with epidemic disease, our 'parasitical companions'. One can only be amazed at how many existed, and thankful to be alive during calmer microbial times. Any account can only include a sample of these diseases, and this one covers cholera, smallpox, plague, influenza, malaria, yellow fever and typhus. The reader will likely find this to be plenty enough.

Armies of Pestilence is part of a family of books on epidemic disease. It is similar to Plagues and Peoples by McNeil, and especially to Cartwright's book on disease and history. Anyone intersted in how the world has been impacted by these outbreaks should find this work informative and enjoyable.