Catalog Search Results

"While the coronavirus disease COVID-19 changed the world in 2020, it still isn't the largest and deadliest pandemic in history. That title is held by the Plague. This disease, also known as the "Black Death," spread throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe in the fourteenth century and claimed an astonishing 50 million lives by the time it officially ended. Author Roberta Edwards takes readers back to these grimy and horrific years, explaining just how...

"Plagues upon the Earth is a history of human civilization and the germs that have shaped its course. At every stage in our species' past, micro-organisms have had macro-effects on the development of human societies. Kyle Harper proposes the first history of human disease to make full use of a radical new source of evidence: pathogen genomes as a biological archive and window into prehistoric times. We can now begin to reconstruct the natural history...

Pandemics change societies. They disrupt life. They end lives. As far back as 3000 B.C.E. (the Bronze Age), plagues have stricken mankind. COVID-19 is just the latest example, but history shows that life continues. It shows that knowledge and social cooperation can save lives. The only known function of viruses is to replicate themselves, which can have devastating consequences on their hosts. Most, but not all, bacteria are good for us. Some are...

"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...

I Survived! During the Black Death in the 14th century, plague doctors wore creepy beaked masks filled with herbs. RIGHT? WRONG! Those masks were from a plague outbreak centuries later--and most doctors never wore anything like that at all! ? With a mix of sidebars, illustrations, photos, and graphic panels, acclaimed author Kate Messner delivers the whole truth about diseases like the bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, influenza,...