Pathogenesis

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, to actions undertaken individually and collectively that have bent the arc of history. In this revelatory book, sociologist and public health professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the peddlers of this myth of human exceptionalism massively overestimate the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.

Drawing on the latest research in fields ranging from genetics and anthropology to archaeology and economics, Pathogenesis takes us through the 60,000 years of our human history, exploring eight major outbreaks of infectious disease that made the modern world. Bacteria and viruses were the protagonists in the demise of the Neanderthals, the growth of Islam, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the devastation wrought by European colonialism, and the growth of the United States from an imperial backwater to a global superpower. Even Christianity rose to prominence on the back of a wave of deadly pandemics that swept through the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries. The members of this small group tended both their own sick and those abandoned by the Romans, saving many lives and helping turn this tiny, obscure sect into one of the world's major religions.

By centering disease in his wide-ranging history of humankind, Kennedy challenges some of our most fundamental assumptions about our collective past--and urges us to view our current moment as another disease-driven inflection point that will change the course of history. Provocative and brimming with insight, Pathogenesis transforms our understanding of the human story.