Customer Reviews

Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today (FT Press Science)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I loved "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and was looking forward to another exciting book on the impact of disease on history. Unfortunately, this is not it. There are some great stories in this book, but overall it reads like a series of undergraduate lectures delivered with minimal fact-checking to an uncritical audience. In a book intended for non-scientists, it's appropriate to omit citations within the text, but no sources are listed anywhere, even for whole chapters and the most controversial claims. As teachers, we plead with students not to take claims at face value, but to look at the evidence. Books are listed at the end for "further reading," but no research articles. There's not much 21st century updating- surely the lovely stories about Helicobacter and language co-evolution and the scary ones about XDR-TB belong here. Prof. Clark knows his microbiology, but is incurious about human genetics, anthropology, and HIV epidemiology, to name just three fields central to his speculations. We are told (p. 15) that the sickle cell mutation is found "only in Africans indigenous to regions harboring P. falciparum malaria". This is just not true. The same mutation is found at relatively high frequencies in Greek, Saudi Arabian, East Indian, and other populations exposed to falciparum malaria; it has evolved independently at least five times. He speculates that differences in sexual permissiveness account for Christian vs Muslim differences in HIV prevalence rates in subSaharan Africa. For several years it's been known that circumcision is highly protective and explains most of these differences. "in Africa...AIDS will thin out the promiscuous and malnourished, and favor the spread of religious puritanism, particularly Islamic sects..." (p. 253). The book is full of this kind of disdainful and eugenic language. Dr Clark has his curmudgeonly peeves, which recur throughout; these include "political correctness," the "anti-smoking lobby", "homosexuals," working women (sloppy housekeepers, they expose their families to Salmonella), and the idea of human-caused global warming. (On p. 245, climate change is described as a natural long-term fluctuation). Did you know that automobile pollution kills germs? Really? Could be- but you will look in vain for a citation to this non-obvious factoid. The book's language is downright quaint. Not since the 1960's have scientists used terms like "savages," "primitive tribes", and "promiscuous." These have not been abandoned because of "political correctness," but because they are scientifically meaningless.

A very generalized account of the history of epidemics and how they have changed civilization. Also, how these epidemics evolve and how we evolve resistance to them. Everything from malaria, Black Death, Mad Cow, Typhus, etc..

This is a very easy read with short chapters. I read where some reviewers criticize this book because of its lack of footnotes or supportive material. On this point I would agree, it is most definitely lacking in these areas. Though it may be accurate historically, it is rather hard to check up on the author's remarks.

That being said, I still found it generally informative even if it is somewhat speculative.

Mr. Clark has written a book that discusses basic disease transmission and the results thereof in a way for the layperson to understand. He goes over the plagues that hit ancient Rome, Greece, Persia, etc. The belief in many religions that disease came from sin or evil spirits (or both) is also expounded upon in short, easy-to-read subsections in the chapter. There is also some scrying going on at the end, where Mr. Clark attempts to divine what sorts of diseases may be born from technology and future populations.

The strengths of the book are its accessibility for someone who may be a history buff but not much of an epidemiologist, and it certainly has interesting facts aobut how diseases wax and wane as microscopic critters make their way through us, leaving trails of death, disfigurement, and stronger immune systems.

The weakness of the book would be some of the writing. The author repeats himself often, sometimes only changing one word in a similar sentence on a nearby page. The repetition should have been done away with by an editor who knows better. The book could easily be 1/3 shorter than it is if the repetitions were taken out.

I've never written a book, and I do not have the sort of big brain that would allow me to become a professor of microbiology at a university, so I hate to nitpick someone else's work, but I wish the editor had done a better job here and I also wish there were footntotes so we could see where the information is coming from.

David Clark is a professor of Microbiology at Southern Illinois University. And he has written a literate, accessible volume on the interaction of genes, germs, and civilization. One early example: Rome was a huge, teeming city where disease took a toll on residents. On the other hand, many died from these diseases. On the other hand, over time, they developed resistance to the germs that they had been subjected to. So, when "barbarians" like the Huns approached, from rural backgrounds where disease was not as prevalent, they often fell prey to disease and were unable to complete their conquest of Rome.

The central theme of his book (Page 11): "Human typically labor under the illusion that they control their own destiny. However, I argue in this book that infectious disease has had a massive unrecognized effect on human history and culture."

A good, solid work that provides many examples of the linkages among genes, germs, and civilization. If you want a detailed academic tome, this will not be for you. If you want illustrations of the interactions noted previously, then you will get context, rationale, and examples. Among subjects covered: crowding and disease; irrigation, sewers, and disease; food and disease (e.g., mad cow disease); "pestilence and warfare" (the title of one of his chapters). The final chapter looks at emerging diseases and what the future might mold.

In the end, I believe that he does a solid job in addressing the following (Page xiii): "Disease has influenced our cultural and religious beliefs, as well as determined the outcome of wars and major historical events. I have tried to show how beneficial long-term effects have resulted from epidemics that were terrible tragedies to those caught up in them."

This book seemed overly selectionist. I think that was my only large complaint about this book. Every time he talks about a disease evolving on adaptation is considered, genetic drift isn't every mentioned. For instance, when talking about a influenza or ebola he only mentions that it will be selected for high virulence...etc. Genetic drift could have resulted in the same mutation...etc.

Also, he is quite repetitive, he seems to think the reader will forget what he has mentioned previously, so he then spends a sentence or two every section reminding us.

The paragraph structure is quite segmented and fairly distracting. I think that the longest paragraph was 15 sentences. Also, there are only three or four paragraphs per subsection. I guess the purpose of this was to keep those with less previous knowledge from becoming disinterested.

I expected this book to read much like a slightly less dense biology lecture but that I might slog through a quarter of it. Instead, it's a clearly written book that easily explains the genetic/biology stuff while bringing in the Big Picture historical changes brought about by infections. The idea is pretty surprising: infections gave rise to historical changes and trends, and that without understanding them you can't understand how civilizations rise and fall. It's one of those books that change the way that you see the world.

The lackings of this book -- it does need a better editor and there aren't any footnotes -- are nothing compared to the author's ability to explain what is really a wildly difficult topic in clear prose for the average reader. Footnotes in a book like this would probably have been distracting, although I would have appreciated endnotes; the editing issues are mostly repetitions that could have been smoothed over better and not irritating failures of explanation. Most experts can't write like this, can't explain these big concepts in plain language, which is why so many of these types of books are written by science journalists. Clark pulls it off extremely well.

Highly recommended.

I think this topic is fascinating, and it could form the basis of a book as interesting as Guns, Germs, and Steel (or others). However, the author fails to support many of his statements adequately, and the editor did not take him to task for this failing. The book is poorly organized and needs more rigorous research at its core. I cannot take this book too seriously; it seems to have been dashed off by a retiring scientist who did not apply a sufficiently critical eye to some interesting ideas.

I read this book as a follow on to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, an excellent book which first highlighted to me the effect of the environment on history (as opposed to self determinism or human values/choices). "Germs Genes and Civilization" has a much narrower focus (it is actually much more about Germs and Civilization than about Germs and Genes) -- but brings lots and lots of facts and details that don't come up on Jared's book.

Specifically (but not exclusively) the book talks about the relationship between:

Religion and Germs -- plagues that killed many favored conversion and religious puritanism, religions that preached hygiene and practices that lowered infectious death rates were selected for higher growth;

Economics and Germs -- when population is high labor is cheap and political power is in the hands of land owners, when germs kill large percentages of the population greater power is given to the people, and it thus favors democracy and market economies

Military History and Germs -- empires with large urban concentrations are more resistant to germs, and thus germs fight on the side of the larger armies/larger empires, and this helped create a snowball effect that led to the Roman Empire, for instance;

The book also brings a lot of interesting trivia about the various types of infections, where they came from, how they evolved and why they are no longer a threat. All in all a very interesting book.

On the down side (and that is why I deduct a star from the review) the chapters become a tad repetitive after a while. There's overlap of themes between the chapters and when that happens the author usually starts with a recap which essentially repeats what had been said before (much like these TV series that start with "on the last episode..."). This may help some, but was a bit of a turn-off for me and made the book less interesting to read as chapter advanced.

In any case, I recommend this book if you like Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel". If you haven't read that, I'd suggest you start from it. Plus, if you like the approach and discussion, but would like to see it used in a completely different historic element, take a look at The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, from Daniel Yergin.

Germs are a very important fact of our lives and a crucial part of the biosphere. However, the vast majority of the microscopic organism is not dangerous. In fact, many of them are beneficial for our lives and we would not be able to survive without them. The one that do cause disease on the other hand are much more noteworthy and have played a significant role in human history. This book explores the impact of virulent germs on many historical events and developments, and tries to present the case that virulent diseases have had a much more significant impact on civilization than it's oftentimes assumed.

The book's biggest strength are the parts that deal directly with the virulent diseases - their characterization and origin, the symptoms, the mortality rates, and the circumstances that led to their spread and influence. Here most readers will learn a few interesting and important new facts, and will probably have some of their misconceptions challenged.

Overall the case for the civilizational level effects of virulent diseases is not made all that strongly. The author is obviously neither a historian nor someone who can weave the kind of narrative that one expects from works of history. Oftentimes his claims are a bit too broad and not entirely supported by the evidence that he presents. He is fond of jumping to the extraordinary conclusions based on the flimsiest of evidence, and is not clear in distinguishing facts (or at least scholarly consensus) from his own oftentimes wild opinions. On several occasions he resorts to low-level ad hominem attacks on historical figures, without ever presenting an iota of justification for such strong epithets. This is rather silly at best, and very unprofessional. Such practices make all of his claims rather suspect, and although several germ influenced civilization-shaping scenarios seem plausible, it is hard for an impartial reader to ascertain how credible they are. The "Further reading" list at the end of the book seems to be also the list of works consulted for writing of this book, which is not all that encouraging: most of these works are secondary or tertiary sources, and almost all of them are popular presentations meant for the general readership. This leaves one feeling that the author of this book is more of a well-informed intellectual, rather than any kind of expert in this field.

The most disappointing part of the book concerns the middle word from the title: genes. It turns out that there aren't any discussions of the genes in this book. Recent decades have seen a remarkable exponential growth of our understanding of DNA and genes, and these new discoveries and resources have been finding their way into all sorts of fields in disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, criminology and linguistics. It would have been interesting to know about some possibly new insights of DNA analysis as it pertains to microbiology of germs, but unfortunately there is no such discussion in this book. This is a shame, not least because the tilt did imply something of the sort to be found in here.

This is actually an interesting and very readable book if one does not expect too much out of it. I have enjoyed reading it and have learned many new and interesting facts about germs, but feel that it could have been a much stronger work.

Having taken clinical microbiology in graduate school, and working for a public health agency, I am aware of the impact of historic and emerging disease outbreaks (West Nile, SARS, H1N1)and their possible impact on society, culture and civilizations. The main argument brought forward by this book is that there are overlooked historical examples of disease outbreaks that have helped shaped history; overlooked either because there is no written history available or the sceince at the time was inadequate to accurately identify a causative organism. An epidemiologist would be surprised if this were not so.

I would have to say that most of the evidence brought forth in this book is circumstantial. In several places, the conclusion that pestilence was the cause of a certain invasion's failure is prefaced by a phrase that goes like this, "We do not have any evidence, but ..." It may be true, but then, in the absence of facts, anything might be true.

I have to say that the topic itself has some importance. West Nile Virus has spread through out the US after arriving in New York, and the far more serious Degue Fever is moving northward from the tropics. And although H1N1 flu had less impact that expected, a strong response was certainly called for. If you have an interest in epidemiology, a solid working knowledge of the past is important.

This book suffers enormously from what I would call choppy writing. Very difficult to follow and a struggle to read. The early chapters actually do a fair job of explaning disease outbreaks, and how populations might become resistant, or the disease attenuated. But I feel a better approach would have been to continue from this with chapters on specific diseases and vectors in an historical context rather than marshall many illness to support specific hypotheses (or explain why they are exceptions).