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Describes symptoms and paths of deadly diseases that have impacted the course of human history. Explores how major medical events and plagues impacted society and forever changed the course of history, including a review of the black plague and its effects on the feudal system and yellow fever and its impact on the slave trade. Did the Black Death destroy the feudal system? Did cholera pave the way for modern Manhattan? Did yellow fever help end the...

The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world. It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others -- rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just. For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body. In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history...

Explores the science, history, and current status of the severe and often scary world of widespread outbreaks.

"Explores the history and impact of cholera"-- Provided by publisher.

"Explores the history and impact of measles"-- Provided by publisher.

"Similarities between human reactions to onslaughts of deadly diseases separated by millennia illustrates the morbid universality of such outbreaks. It reminds us that large attacks of lethal germs are nothing new, nor are human reactions to them. One problem inherent in such pandemics is that over time people tend to forget the lessons of past"-- Provided by publisher.

"A sweeping look at how the major transformations in history--from the rise of Homo sapiens to the birth of capitalism--have been shaped not by humans but by germs. 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...

"The Black Death of the late Middle Ages is often described as the greatest natural disaster in the history of humankind. More than fifty million people, half of Europe's population, died during the first outbreak alone from 1347 to 1353. Plague then returned fifteen more times through to the end of the medieval period in 1500, posing the greatest challenge to physicians ever recorded in the history of the medical profession. This engrossing book...

Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this...

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Black Death was unquestionably one of history's defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia. Tracing the pandemic's course across...