This is an easy to devour story of infectious disease and how it is intertwined with society. Kenny confronts the causes and efforts to control pandemics over thousands of years of human history in a very engaging way.
I was worried at first that this might just be a timely "cash in" book considering the current world health crisis, but this would still be as great a read in 2018 as it is today. There are current references to ongoing issues, but the subject is global pandemics, not Covid19. And as always, understanding history is key to understanding the present.
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![The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by [Charles Kenny]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hBsVudZKS._SY346_.jpg)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
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
“The Plague Cycle is this year’s must read….If you want to understand the current COVID-19 crisis and be prepared for what is likely to come next, read this book.”
—Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class
“A completely fresh view on world history—sweeping, humane, and uncomfortably timely.”
—Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist
“An astute explication of our species’ battles with microbes since the dawn of human time. An optimist, Kenny argues that humanity has the tools to conquer infectious diseases.”
—Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague
“Throughout history, infectious diseases have been defeated. Covid-19 will be defeated too. Charles Kenny’s brilliant The Plague Cycle is the book of the hour.”
—Gregg Easterbrook, author of It’s Better Than It Looks
“Compelling…Kenny reminds us that nothing unites us, or divides us, as powerfully as our infectious diseases.”
—Kyle Harper author of The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
“Kenny has penned a concise, erudite, and highly readable narrative probing humanity's protracted and Malthusian battle against deadly pathogens from malaria and smallpox to cholera and Covid.”
—Timothy Winegard, author of The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator
“Important, timely, and also gripping….Fit to stand beside William H. McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples.”
—David Wootton, author of Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates and The Invention of Science
"The Plague Cycle stands in a long tradition of informative plagues-and-people books…A timely, lucid look at the role of pandemics in history."
—Kirkus Reviews
“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)
About the Author
Charles Kenny is a writer-researcher at the Center for Global Development and has worked on policy reforms in global health as well as UN peacekeeping and combating international financial corruption. Previously, he spent fifteen years as an economist at the World Bank, travelling the planet from Baghdad and Kabul to Brasilia and Beijing. He is the author of The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease, Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More, and The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest Is Great for the West. He earned a history degree at Cambridge and has graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and Cambridge. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
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Customer reviews
S T I C K • W I T H • MEI know, a book about infectious disease during a pandemic? No thanks. But it’s not what you think and is actually pretty interesting!The Plague Cycle by Charles Kenny examines the topic of infectious diseases and their relationship with population growth, the development of civilizations, colonialism, exploration, warfare, diet, technology/innovation, feminism, the sexual revolution, economy/trade, poverty, and violence. Although the ideas were at times repetitive (a major gripe of mine with many non-fiction books) and although some of these ideas seemed to be purported as causal in nature when they are likely more correlated, it was nonetheless intriguing to explore the interconnectedness of these ideas. We often consider our experience of things like this within our own small bubble, so viewing infectious disease through a much wider lense in time and space was thought-provoking. Learning of the history behind the development of some of the most world-changing vaccines was also fascinating, although the ethical violations involved were horrifying to say the least!I think the saddest thing to see in reading this one is that, even after millenia of infectious disease and with all of the valuable tools, technology, and scientific advances with which we can fight them, we still resort back to our base primal instincts of exclusion when faced with these threats.I’d recommend this one to anyone who is a fan of science-based non-fiction - the Discovery Channel lovers of the reading world - so long as you can put up with a bit of repetition and some jumping back and forth in the chronology of the narrative.Thank you @simonschusterca @scribnerbooks @netgalley for the #gifted copy!
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Kaz Yasuda
Historical accounts of plagues will deepen your perspectives
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