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The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease Hardcover – January 19, 2021

by Charles Kenny (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 87 ratings
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A vivid, sweeping history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease, for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza.

For four thousand years, the size and vitality of cities, economies, and empires were heavily determined by infection. Striking humanity in waves, the cycle of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since common response to the threat was exclusion—quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But the unprecedented hygiene and medical revolutions of the past two centuries have allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles—resulting in an urbanized, globalized, and unimaginably wealthy world.

However, our development has lately become precarious. Climate and population fluctuations and aspects of our prosperity such as global trade have left us more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. Greater global cooperation toward sustainable health is urgently required—such as the international efforts to harvest a Covid-19 vaccine—with millions of lives and trillions of dollars at stake.

Written as colorful history, The Plague Cycle reveals the relationship between civilization, globalization, prosperity, and infectious disease over the past five millennia. It harnesses history, economics, and public health, and charts humanity’s remarkable progress, providing a fascinating and timely look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Scribner
  4. Publication date
    January 19, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1982165332
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1982165338
  8. See all details
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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

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner (January 19, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982165332
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1982165338
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 87 ratings

About the author

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Charles Kenny

Charles Kenny

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Charles Kenny spent fifteen years as an economist in the World Bank, travelling the planet from Baghdad and Kabul to Brasilia and Beijing. He now works at a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Global Development, where he researches and advocates for policies governing investment, trade, technology and migration that would be good for both developing and industrialized countries alike. In addition, he is a widely cited researcher on the economics of happiness. He has a history degree from Cambridge University, Masters degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a PhD from Cambridge University.

Charles was a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a columnist for Bloomberg Business¸ where he wrote on global development and its impact on the US. He also writes for outlets including the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Time, the Guardian, Vox, Salon and CNN.

He keeps a personal blog at http://www.charleskenny.blogs.com/

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
87 global ratings
Interesting read
3 Stars
Interesting read
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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Top reviews from the United States

Giannoula Tziovara
5.0 out of 5 stars Great! Readable, informative, passionate and witty
Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2021
Verified Purchase
I read through this one much faster than I normally do with non-fiction. Overall the thesis is that pathogenic illnesses and epidemics have had a much greater impact on the development and growth (and sudden 100% negative growth events) of human societies and great civilisations than we think. It's well-structured, convincing, and a great read, with entertaining anecdotes dotted among the statistics.

It should age well, too. It's not actually about Covid! The author seems to have started the book well before the pandemic: I imagine his publishers must have been quite pleased to have that one on the books, as it were, as we all went into lockdown.

There's nothing really to quibble about The Plague Cycle. The only problem might be that the book is such a good treatment of the subject, I'm not sure there's much room for a sequel!
8 people found this helpful
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She Treads Softly
4.0 out of 5 stars highly recommended overview of the history of infectious diseases
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2021
The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny is a highly recommended overview of the history of infectious diseases with some discussion of them in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The good news is that recent history suggests "humanity’s response to the new threat can be rapid and effective if we so choose. And that reassures us that humanity in the twenty-first century is in a considerably better position in the fight against infection than earlier generations. Because for most of humanity’s time on the planet, effective responses never came." For most of history plagues and diseases were the leading cause of death. Today it is heart attacks and strokes.

As Kenny points out, humanity is very resilient even in the face of even the most incredible stress created by large scale epidemics, pandemics and plague outbreaks. People lived through numerous epidemics over the years- the Black Death, typhus, measles, small pox, without resorting to social chaos and throwing morality aside. Agriculture and civilization set off a global firestorm of disease, especially once urbanization started. Before we started taking sanitary practices seriously, the only effective way to exposure to diseases was to quarantine the sick or refuse their entry to your area. Then, once we understood hygiene, it became possible to have more urbanization, which was further helped by medical advancements (sterilized medical treatment, antibiotics, vaccinations, etc.) and the understanding of how to combat infectious diseases.

As our world is becoming more globally connected, it is now more important to address our vulnerabilities to new emerging infectious diseases and potential plagues. For example, we need to address the overuse of antibiotics which has led to a strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The global reaction to Covid-19 showcases the need for international cooperation on several different areas.

As someone who has read many books of various infectious diseases, plagues, and epidemics it should be noted that this is not meant to be a complex or complete history of infectious diseases. It is a nice overview for the general reader who wants more information on the subject and the text flows smoothly from one chapter to the next. It is a well-rounded overview written for the lay person. For more information, Kenny has a bibliography of his sources or look at the notes included in the text for subjects you might want to pursue further. Kenny is the director of technology and development at the Center for Global Development.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Scribner.
7 people found this helpful
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Maria A. Lugo
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, entertaining, with a big historical sweep
Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2021
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Kenny provides a short, readable account of the role of plagues throughout human history. From the flaws in Malthusianism to the incentive problems posed by vaccine research, the book is full of hard thinking about the interaction between disease and society. Kenny is particularly incisive about the social pathologies that plagues unleash, with clear -- but not overly preachy -- lessons for the current one.

The Plague Cycle is beautifully written, easy to read, and chock full of fascinating historical anecdotes from the possible inspiration for the biblical plagues to the origin of the (40-day) quarantine in the plague fourteen centuries later. A fun, timely read.
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Mike Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable read about a timely, if frightening subject
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021
Verified Purchase
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.
7 people found this helpful
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Anila Tai
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly engaging and compelling narrative on thuman prosperity
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2021
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This is a fantastic, immersive book that weaves together a historical narrative with a current socio-political take on how plagues manifest in society. While clearly relevant for our current Covid-19 epoch, the book does much more to deepen the understanding of how population growth and progressive urbanization led to cycles of public health challenges which required societal responses (e.g. sanitation) to avoid falling into the plague cycle. The thinking is well-researched and organized to draw insightful linkages.
5 people found this helpful
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Tardigrade
4.0 out of 5 stars A Neat Summary
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2021
Perfect last book in 2020, a year of the plague. Here you will find every possible information about infectious diseases, a topic that suddenly became in vogue: from how microbes and viruses influenced human history to the inventions that allowed us to fight back to a warning what can happen if we won’t change our behavior towards antibiotics and global health care. It also mentions Covid-19 and its aftermath, but this knowledge is essential not only because of this recent pestilence.

If you are interested in the topic and devoured as many books about infectious diseases as I, you rather won’t find much new information here. Nonetheless, it is an enjoyable reading and a neat summary of many different aspects of this topic. And if you are new to this and just want to get some orientation, it is a perfect beginner's guide.

Thanks to the publisher, Scribner, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.
4 people found this helpful
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A M
5.0 out of 5 stars The human history as a consequence of plagues
Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2021
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A comprehensive review of the influence of the various infections on human society. I mainly enjoyed the first chapters where the author explains many historical events as a consequence of several plagues. The other chapters include well-known data, and therefore are somewhat disappointing.
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Washington B. Filho
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read.
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2021
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A carefully written book on plain English, full of good and valid info. Quite actual
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Maureen Consolati
5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening
Reviewed in Canada on February 9, 2021
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An excellent summary of contagious disease through the ages, and a warning for the future. Illustrates the need for humans to review and modify our behaviour and relationship to the natural world. The one large deficit is the authors failure to recognize that reduction of the size of human population is key to our survival as a species and indeed he seems willing to accommodate population growth.
One person found this helpful
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Kaz Yasuda
4.0 out of 5 stars Historical accounts of plagues will deepen your perspectives
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2021
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Historical perspectives reveal that infectious diseases have often resulted in xenophobia and discrimination against women. Lack of knowledge led to fear and violence. Policy makers should learn from this and reflect these in their decision making. Hoarding vaccine and blaming foreigners should be avoided at all costs.
One person found this helpful
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