ren_the_hobbit's review
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
5.0
This book is amazing. Anyone interested in public health, history or infectious diseases will love it. But it should also reach a wider audience. We are in a time period where we are noticing again that infectious diseases aren’t gone, they never were. And like everything else, looking at history can help us make informed decisions. The last few chapters particularly are a call to action against inequality.
patcaetano98's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
“This [farming] may have had the benefit of allowing us to produce more food, but it also led to the emergence of despotism, inequality, poverty and back-breaking, mind-numbing work.”
“The implications of this are momentous: contemporary Europeans are neither genetically "pure" nor are they the region's indigenous people. Even white Europeans are mongrel immigrants.”
“The ten poorest countries in the world are all former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. It is not unreasonable to conclude that these societies would have been better off if Europeans had never discovered a moderately effective treatment for malaria and the region had remained a white man's grave.”
“Notwithstanding, it was the iron fist of the totalitarian state that pulled China out of the poverty trap rather than the invisible hand of the market.”
“Millions of people still die every year from preventable and treatable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa because of lack of political will. If politicians-both domestically and on the international stage-prioritized prevention and treatment, then the impact of infectious diseases would quickly become negligible, just as it has in China. The paralysis in much of sub-Saharan Africa is, in part at least, a legacy of colonialism.”
“The implications of this are momentous: contemporary Europeans are neither genetically "pure" nor are they the region's indigenous people. Even white Europeans are mongrel immigrants.”
“The ten poorest countries in the world are all former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. It is not unreasonable to conclude that these societies would have been better off if Europeans had never discovered a moderately effective treatment for malaria and the region had remained a white man's grave.”
“Notwithstanding, it was the iron fist of the totalitarian state that pulled China out of the poverty trap rather than the invisible hand of the market.”
“Millions of people still die every year from preventable and treatable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa because of lack of political will. If politicians-both domestically and on the international stage-prioritized prevention and treatment, then the impact of infectious diseases would quickly become negligible, just as it has in China. The paralysis in much of sub-Saharan Africa is, in part at least, a legacy of colonialism.”
hakkun1's review
informative
fast-paced
2.5
A somewhat fluffy historical survey of disease’s role in shaping some of human history. Extremely Eurocentric, specifically Anglocentric, non-Europeans only appear in the context of the relations with Europeans. If taken with a grain of salt, it’s an okay jumping off point for further reading, but the bibliography is much more valuable than the text, which is a somewhat tired amble through the default narrative of Western Civilization with the word “plague” highlighted.