Plagues upon the EarthKyle Harper
Plagues upon the Earth
by Kyle Harper · first published 2021
4mentions
1recommended by
2HN commenters
2022–2024first – last mentioned
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"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 of human disease at the molecular level, tracing the biographies of the viruses, bacteria, and protozoa that have haunted our species. The story
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The best non-fiction book I read in 2022 was Plagues Upon the Earth (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57423807-plagues-upon-th...) a history of infectious disease in humans. It really changed my views on a lot of things, especially how recently many contagious diseases…
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗Plagues Upon the Earth is maybe even more on point to the plague bit in particular, with the co-evolution of human society and infectious disease over history taking the front stage.
on “Skulls reveal scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital (2018)” ↗This is a podcast episode and interview with the author of Plagues Upon the Earth, Oklahoma University historian Kyle Harper. Direct audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN2511895438.mp3
on “Kyle Harper: Plagues Upon the Earth Disease and the Course of Human History” ↗…"something went wrong" seems to me misled, and a better formulation would be that such golden ages were living on borrowed time in the first place. Podcast episode of Harper addressing a similar theme from Plagues Upon the Earth: <https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN2511895438.mp3>.
on “A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history” ↗