Average customer rating:
- One of The Easier Reads From Camus
- A great and moving work of literature
- One of the best books I've read
- Examining a Plague Stoically
- How people confront extreme circumstances
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The Plague
Albert Camus
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Similar Items:
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The Stranger
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The Fall
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The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
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No Exit and Three Other Plays
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Nausea
ASIN: 0679720219
Release Date: 1991-05-07 |
Amazon.com
The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa,
The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.
Book Description
A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
Customer Reviews:
One of The Easier Reads From Camus.......2007-08-26
This is one of the easier reads from Camus and it is a straightforward story. It was published in 1947 after Camus's basic ideas on religion, life, and the absurd had been formed. The novel brings forth Camus's ideas on the absurd, and the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice. The plagues is an event that tests man's reaction to the crisis, and the city and the plague are literary vehicles used by Camus to describe human reactions.
Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism. The present book is one of his last works.
Camus combined his philosophy with his writing skills to produce literary art. The end result is sometimes complicated. It takes a close and careful examination to see exactly what points he is trying to make. For example, Camus descibed his novel The Stranger as a story about someone who was telling the unvarnished truth, but it was more complicated than simply that.
For The Plague, he has created a relatively simple story about a plague that grips the Algerian city of Oran brought on by a disease carried by rats. It is a narrative by a doctor Rieux who treats the sick and deals with the survivors.
Camus's ideas can be found in the non-fiction work The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) (1942): it is about "the absurd sensitivity." That idea is continued here in The Plague. We cannot conclude that Camus "found religion" in the present work nor are there any changes in Camus's philosophy. There are a number of interesting characters in Ther Plague who are used by Camus to make his point. One such character is a priest. A controversey surrounds the priest because he calls for a simple choice: total acceptance or rejection of religion.
Overall, this is a good book from Camus that takes only four or five hours to read and is relatively easy to understand. It is far less complicated than The Fall, and it is straighforward to read and understand similar to The Stranger. It is less philosphical than some of his other books and a few ideas are subtle.
This is one instance, similar to The Fall by Camus, where you should look beyond the reviews here to get a deeper understanding of the work; and, it is probably best to read some of the detailed analysis found elswhere in critical books or on the net.
A great and moving work of literature.......2007-08-20
Camus is not writing about the plague, as graphic as some of the descriptions of disease may be. He is writing about the human spirit and how it deals not just with adversity but with absurdity. The least appropriate response to the plague is the most common -- that of banality. For many residents, life just goes on but becomes infinitely boring. For those who strive with evil and death, life becomes infinitely valuable and infinitely interesting. Think of Rieux, putting in his 20-hour days. Even the miscreant Cottard finds meaning in the plague; for him, it means that all the inhabitants are in the same situation as he is.
Quite a remarkable work. A true classic.
One of the best books I've read.......2007-05-30
I was incredibly taken in by The Plague. The languaga is so ,agnificent that I imagine the original French must be even more so. The way Camus conveys the mindsets of the townfolk serves as a perfect example of the hu,an condition.
Examining a Plague Stoically .......2007-05-27
The Plague is an okay read about survival during a plague. It is low key and non-sensational and even has a passage that says that the author wants to record the events without sensationalism. Unfortunately, this grim, manly stoicism makes the book a little boring.
The book makes you think about how you would react during a time of extreme crisis by reading about how the main character, Rieux, and the citizens react. When normal life comes to a standstill, Rieux and the citizens of Oran are forced to think about what is important in life. They are slow to understand that their lives are changing permanently because of the plague. They find it unbelievable that their daily lives could be interrupted by the pestilence. Fear causes the citizens to seriously reflect on their lives because daily routines and mundane consciousness have been disturbed after the death of Michel from the plague: "And it was then that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began."
They are taken by surprise by the plague and believe that it cannot happen to them: "In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves, in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences....How should they have given thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences exchange of views."
The stoppage of normal life is inconceivable to those who have not experienced the plague. It still remains hard for the people to comprehend the plague and its history of horror as the spring comes on: "...cartloads of bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-hearted darkness, nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all these horrors when not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting cruelty and pain."
Rieux himself has trouble comprehending that the plague would become full-blown in a such a town as Oran, which has its share of eccentrics such as Grand: "He realized how absurd it was, but simply could not believe that a pestilence on the great scale could befall a town where people like Grand could be found, obscure functionaries cultivating harmless eccentricies."
I particularly liked Rieux's reaction to Rambert's accusation that he was reacting to the plague and the people affected by it too abstractly. Rieux silently mocks Rambert's idea that he lives in a world of abstractions: "Could that term "abstraction" really apply to the days that he spent in his hospital while the plague was battening on the town, raising its death toll to five hundred victims a week....Still when an abstraction sets to killing you, you've got to get busy with it." Rieux plays on the word "abstraction" when substituting it for "evacuation" of the person who has the plague and has to be forcibly removed from the family who resists. He says that "...of course, he had pity, but what purpose did that serve?" He has to follow the rules of the quarantine during the plague. When children fall ill the mothers wail with "distraught abstraction" every evening as the doctor makes house calls. Rieux feels "bleak indifference" coming on as he handles so many cases like this. Rieux uses that indifference to survive the long hours of dealing with plague victims, remarking that, "To fight abstraction, you must have something of it in your own make up." He finds solace in his lack of emotion. But he does not expect Rambert to understand what he is going through. Rieux actually deals with heart-rending situations, but he must shut himself off from feeling too much pain about them.
How people confront extreme circumstances.......2007-05-05
It isn't trivial that Albert Camus studied philosophy. In this book, the Nobel Laureate uses a "plague" to explore how different people react to the hardships and incomprehensible nature of what is thrust upon them. It takes place in the town of Oran, where one day the rats start dying off, and the people quickly follow. The town is sealed off, and the characters have to deal with the isolation and and the bleakness of their circumstance, among other things. This is an excellent book about humanity, but if you are looking for a horror story or something filled with obvious bestseller suspense, look elsewhere. Camus keeps the reader interested throughout, but the interest is in the character of the people he populates the town with, not necessarily with the disease itself. I'd highly recommend it, but just know what you're getting into.
Book Description
The end begins with a viral outbreak unlike anything mankind has ever encountered before. The infected are subject to delirium, fever, a dramatic increase in violent behavior, and a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Death. But it doesn't end there. The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead it escalates into a global pandemic. In one fell swoop, the necessities of life become much more basic. Gone are petty everyday concerns. Gone are the amenities of civilized life. Yet a single law of nature remains: Live, or die. Kill, or be killed. On one side of the world, a battle-hardened General surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash Private, and dozens of refugees, all are his responsibility-all thousands of miles from home. Back in the United States, an Army Colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar virus and begins to collaborate with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public... The Morningstar Saga has begun.
Customer Reviews:
Not the worst, but close.......2007-10-02
I have a serious thing for zombies. If it is about the undead I will read it or watch it. Because of this I have read a whole lot of horrible books. While this is certainly not the worst of the genre it does come fairly close.
The novel is grammatically sound, sadly an unusual trait in most zombie books. This does help an awful lot, but it certainly isn't enough to overcome paper thin characters throughout the book. I mean it, there isn't one well developed character in the entire book. Transparent, poorly researched caricatures of people are all you get, and it is often enough to make you cringe. There's the gruff general who is a natural leader, the plucky red cross nurse, and enough soldiers stolen from various movies to fill a small stadium.
Another glaring problem is the lazy story development. This book is made up of long strings of ridiculously convenient plot devices that carry the story from A to B. It reads like the author had a an idea for the beginning and end of a story and decided to slap together enough filler to get you from one to the other.
I gave the novel two stars because I think this is the author's first book. Since his technical writing skills aren't too bad there is room for him to pull it together and learn how to write at least marginally interesting characters and plot lines. Considering how god awful much of this genre is, it is at least a bit refreshing to find a writer that knows the difference between 'there' 'their' and 'they're'.
Book.......2007-09-22
This is a strong book that always keeps yo guessing and on the edge of your seat. I think that this author writes some nice pieces of written masterpiece! I will be buying more!
Plague of the Dead review.......2007-09-04
If you enjoy Zombie stories like I do (guilty pleasure) then you will really enjoy this one. This book has all of the attributes of a world-wide zombie apocalypse. It incorporates a causative agent and the in-effective efforts of the military. The story centers on several different characters and their experiences. It is a complete story but could very well have another book following the surviving characters.
Lot of Action and Survival.......2007-08-24
The story takes the reader through Africa, the Middle-East and finally to the United States. The story becomes more compelling as the number of soldiers and civilian refugees dwindles and they are forced to find supplies where they can.
If only I could have been better convinced that the battle at Suez was truly un-winnable, then I would have given this book 5 stars. That wasn't even the key turning point in the story that it seemed to be; The world was lost before then.
The story is very good and I am glad I read it. I am looking forward to the rest of the series.
Good read.......2007-08-03
I quite enjoyed this book. I'm relatively new to zombie books, so I couldn't say which ideas were new and which aren't, but I liked the concept of having two different types of zombies. The parallels drawn between the Morningstar virus and other viruses also made sense to me.
I had a couple of minor issues with the book. There were a fair number of spelling/printing errors in my copy (such as Pacific Northwest not being capitalized). Not the fault of the author, nor did they detract from my enjoyment. But the copy editor needs to double check his work.
*Spoiler Warning*
The other issue is a pet peeve of mine. I grew up in northern California - five hours north of San Francisco. From where I lived, it was another hour and a half to two hours to the Oregon border. If the Ramage was headed to San Francisco, and they were dropped off a little north of the city - even 2 hundred miles north - they would have been crossing northern California, not Oregon. Not a major issue, but it seems like there's a lot of folks that forget that San Francisco is in the middle of the state. Like I said, pet peeve.
Still a good book, though, and I look forward to the sequel.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
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History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
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Similar Items:
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History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
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History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
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They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies
ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Amazon.com
One-third of Western Europe's population died between 1348 and 1350, victims of the Black Death. Noted medievalist Norman Cantor tells the story of the pandemic and its widespread effects in In the Wake of the Plague.
After giving an overview, Cantor describes various theories about the medical crisis, from contemporary fears of a Jewish conspiracy to poison the water (and the resulting atrocities against European Jews) to a growing belief among modern historians that both bubonic plague and anthrax caused the spiraling death rates. Cantor also details ways in which the Black Death changed history, at both the personal level (family lines dying out) and the political (the Plantagenet kings may well have been able to hold onto France had their resources not been so diminished).
Cantor veers from topic to topic, from dynastic worries to the Dance of Death, and from peasants' rights to Perpendicular Gothic. This makes for amusing reading, though those seeking an orderly narrative may be frustrated. He also seems overly concerned with rumors of homosexual behavior, and his attempt to link the savage method of Edward II's murder to a cooling in global weather is a bit farfetched.
Cantor wears his considerable scholarship lightly, but includes a very useful critical biography for further reading. While not an entry-level text on the Black Death, In the Wake of the Plague will interest readers looking for a broader interpretation of its consequences. --Sunny Delaney
Book Description
The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, takingmillion lives. And yet, most of what we know about it is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren -- the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the awful end by respiratory failure -- are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was and how it made history remain shrouded in a haze of myths.
Now, Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.
Customer Reviews:
Poor writing, poor research.......2007-10-05
This book is sufficiently weak to raise doubts in my mind about the rest of Cantor's work.
"In the Wake of the Plague" reads like an extended version of the class notes for a freshman course. Cantor rambles, offers "insights" that more nearly resemble anecdotes and lets slip his own biases (arguably bigotries) frequently.
Moreover, he routinely fails to offer context which might tend to undermine his own sweeping assertions.
All of the sources are secondary. There is no footnoting. The intended audience is clearly the general public. Fine. But don't show contempt for your readers by writing thinly supported meanderings like this.
Don't waste your money on buying this book .......2007-08-29
Norma Cantor may be the Emeritus Professor of History, Sociology and Comparative Literature at New York University, but he cannot write serious prose about a serious subject. His writing is infantile; it has numerous editorial errors, frequent repetitions and idiotic references (such as the Plague "threatened the stability and viability of civilization. It was as if a neutron bomb had been detonated". Plain crass.
Bottom Line: Don't waste your money on buying this book
Where oh where was the editor?.......2007-08-24
The book was a somewhat enjoyable read, but I think the unedited version must have gone to the printers. I thought perhaps that a high school student wrote this so poor was the writing / grammar. NYTimes Bestseller - well, people will buy anything.
I found the editorializing comments towards religious people of the time to be condescending and distracting.
A plague upon your book, sir!.......2007-06-12
Professor Cantor is supposed to be a gentleman of academic standing, and, one supposes, learning. That he wrote a book of such ridiculously infantile proportions is a disgrace both to him, and to the company that saw fit to publish it. Neither seems to have any respect for the reader whatsoever. I pass over the juvenile summarisation of the history of England's Plantagent Kings (although one wonders whether Prof. Cantor has ever bothered to read primary accounts of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket), the insulting references to medieval religious attitudes, and the allegedly humourous asides that would produce sycophantic laughter only from students who need a decent grade. What had this reader throwing the book across the room before being half way through it, and being glad I had only borrowed it from the library not actually given over any money for it, was the learned medivialist's assertion that the largest gothic church in the world is in New York City. Um, that would be a gothic-style church, or perhaps even neo-gothic, what with the whole point of the new world being that it wasn't medival europe...
A question.......2007-06-08
Is ther any actual proof that there are more Eurpoean people who are immune to the HIV virus (or the 'AIDS disease' as Cantor puts it), because their ancestors had natural immunity to, or (obviously) survived, the plague? Can plague, which is bacterial, have any baring on peoples' immunity to a virus? I've never heard this before? Presumably it's being posited as a reason Europe is not as badly afflicted as Asia and Africa?
Book Description
The American Plague delves into America's not-so-distant past to recount one of the greatest epidemics of our time. It tells the story of the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee-one that would cost more lives than the Chicago fire, San Francisco earthquake and Johnstown flood combined-and, it is a narrative journey into Cuba and West Africa, where a handful of doctors would change medical history.
Yellow fever, a virus born of the slave trade, struck 500,000 Americans over two centuries touching every state from Texas to Massachusetts. It paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities and altered the outcome of wars. It was not only the gruesome symptoms of the disease-much like those of Ebola today-but the long-term, crippling effect on a place and its people that made it such a dreaded disease and one that the federal government could not ignore.
In 1900, the United States sent three doctors led by Walter Reed to Cuba to discover how this disease was spread. Camped on sprawling farmland just outside of Havana, they launched one of history's most controversial human studies. Two of the doctors would be infected; one would die. Two-dozen men-veterans of the Spanish-American War-would volunteer to be test subjects.
Tragic and terrifying, The American Plague beautifully depicts the story of yellow fever, and its reign in this country. A story that, in the end, is as much about the nature of human beings as it is the nature of disease.
Customer Reviews:
Slow Read.......2007-10-13
I found this text difficult to get through. Perhaps it was my own distractions, but I can't make it through this book.
Walter Reed: American Hero.......2007-06-10
Yellow fever, the West African slave trade's gift to the New World, rips through vulnerable populations like a hot knife through butter. In 1801, Napoleon brought 25,000 troops to put down a Haitian slave revolt; 23,000 died from the fever. (That's why he was in such a rush to ditch the Louisiana Territory, and Jefferson knew a bargain when he saw one.) In 1878, the mosquito-borne virus arrived in Memphis TN, and people started dropping like flies. Molly Caldwell Crosby does a great job describing the city's atmosphere before the fever and its descent into hell as Yellow Jack claims more and more victims.
There were heroic efforts by caregivers who didn't understand the disease but who nonetheless tended to the dead and dying. Crosby describes doctors, and nuns, who knew they'd eventually catch the fever but who worked as hard as they could, for as long as they could, to comfort the sick. Inspiring and scary! Yellow fever isn't the kind of fever that lets you lapse into delirium after a day of discomfort. It's a hemorrhagic fever, which means you bleed from body parts you didn't even know you had. The Brits called it "Black Vomit" because internal bleeding causes the sufferer to vomit blood.
Crosby then focuses on the ultimately successful efforts of Walter Reed and company, military doctors who set up camp in Cuba and doggedly pursued the cause of the disease. Some of these men deliberately infected themselves with the virus in order to prove that mosquito exposure was to blame, and that mosquito control would rein in the disease. Because of Reed and his team, and at least in the Western Hemisphere, we have managed to subdue the Fever.
Reed's campaign goes to show that the many of the greatest military victories occur not on the battlefield but in hospitals.
This is a well-written and interesting book, although I wish some of the chapters went into a bit more detail. Yellow fever isn't quite gone; in some parts of the world, it's still doing its dirty work. To understand this battle-hardened public enemy, read this book.
Could have been an interesting book.......2007-05-12
unfortunately she can't write very well. And unfortunately, I can't get past the first fifty pages because of that. I keep seeing what I warn my undergraduates about, using words they don't know the precise meaning of in an effort to impress with use of a large vocabulary. This woman supposedly has a graduate degree in nonfiction writing.
Guinea Pig #1.......2007-04-14
The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever
Þ By Molly Caldwell Crosby
This book starts as the history of a disease, but ends up being a book about people. Yellow Fever, carried by mosquitoes which entered the Western Hemisphere from ships carrying slaves, struck the city of Memphis with a vengeance in the late 19th century. The 1878 yellow fever epidemic cost 20,000 lives and $200 million in economic damages. The toll on human life in Memphis alone surpassed the Chicago fire, San Francisco earthquake, and Johnstown Flood combined.."
Ironically, the disease claimed more white victims than blacks, and more children than adults. Perhaps blacks developed some immunity to yellow fever. At any rate, the Federal government's response to the Memphis epidemic, much like FEMA's lame response to Katrina, was riddled with racism and politics.
President Rutherford B. Hayes will likely not be remembered for much¡K he was an ineffectual leader at best. But his administration did accomplish the creation of a National Board of Health, later to become the US Public Health Service. But it would take years¡Kand the efforts of courageous doctors like Walter Reed and Dr. Jesse Lazear, who infected himself with the virus and died a martyr to science, to isolate the cause and propose controls for the contagion. Along the way, the Spanish American War and the Caribbean, particularly Cuba, would be central to the story.
Molly Caldwell Crosby has done an excellent job with original sources including previously untapped journals and letters to tell this remarkable tale. Like other accounts of Influenza by John Barry (The Great Influenza) and the Black Death by John Kelly (The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death), her book belongs in any library of medical history.
****
yellow fever book review.......2007-03-09
Thhis is an excellent book on the Historyof Yellow Fever. I recommendit to anyone interested in the History of Medicine and Diseases.
Amazon.com
Where's your next disease coming from? From anywhere in the world--from overflowing sewage in Cairo, from a war zone in Rwanda, from an energy-efficient office building in California, from a pig farm in China or North Carolina. "Preparedness demands understanding," writes Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett, and in this precursor to Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, she shows a clear understanding of the patterns lying beneath the new diseases in the headlines (AIDS, Lyme) and the old ones resurgent (tuberculosis, cholera). As the human population explodes, ecologies collapse and simplify, and disease organisms move into the gaps. As globalization continues, diseases can move from one country to another as fast as an airplane can fly.
While the human race battles itself ... the advantage moves to the microbes' court. They are our predators and they will be victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn how to live in a rational global village that affords the microbes few opportunities.
Her picture is not entirely bleak. Epidemics grow when a disease outbreak is amplified--by contaminated water supplies, by shared needles, by recirculated air, by prostitution. And controlling the amplifiers of disease is within our power; it's a matter of money, people, and will. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Customer Reviews:
More riveting than The Hot Zone .......2007-09-03
If you liked The Hot Zone, you will love this book. The Hot Zone told the scary story of a variant of Ebola that turned out to be harmless to humans. The Coming Plague narrates the history of little-known but lethal diseases such as Machupo, Ebola, Four-Corners Hantavirus, Lassa Fever, Marburg and others. In each of these cases, the list of victims was relatively small, but the onset and progress of these illnesses were frightful. Garrett examines how "disease cowboys" worked backward to patient zero, followed the course of the illness, discovered its means of transmission and identified each disease. In a few cases, the original vector could not be found, despite a careful search. How even medical professionals react when they find out that they too, have the disease is a fascinating psychological study. Often they go into a state of denial, like the researcher in New York who came down with Lassa after studying some samples. At the other extreme was one doctor, who, fearing he was exposed to Ebola, hit the bottle hoping that alcohol would kill the virus. To his relief it turned out to be measles.
A large amount of this book is devoted to AIDS. Garrett details its emergence in the early 80s. She is critical of the government's slow response, which she says was partly due to the insistence of some in the Reagan administration that since it affected only homosexual men it was beneath concern. On the other hand, she suggests that the rampant promiscuity of some members of the gay community didn't help matters either. While there was enough blame to go around, the real heroes were a handful of careful physicians who noted some bizarre symptoms among their gay patients and brought this medical condition to the CDC and the world's attention. While this book presents an excellent history of the emergence of AIDS in both America and Africa, Garrett's information on AIDS is now unfortunately out-of-date.
The author presents more chapters on antibiotic-resistant TB, Legionnaire's Disease, the problem with overdosing farm animals with antibiotics and even Toxic Shock Syndrome. At one point, I bogged down with information overload. But during Garrett's chapters on hemorrhagic and other exotic fevers, this book is difficult to put down.
Fascinating and frightening.......2007-07-23
This book, when it came out, pointed out the coming problems in our medical system like antibiotic resistance, long before it became common knowledge. But it also suggests that as we continue to transform our environment, new plagues and diseases will continue to threaten our existence.
My only criticism of the book is that it was a difficult read, because it is very densely packed with information. This book requires patience to read, but it is well worth it.
Extraordinary.......2007-03-31
After finishing this book you will never read a newspaper the same way again. I am amazed, and a little scared, at how much of what Laurie Garrett wrote in 1995 has come to pass in 2007. Her story about the "disease cowboys" who track the causes of unexplained epidemics in the remote corners of the world is both absorbing and eye-opening. And it has helped me to see disturbing trends in current news stories that I would have missed had I not read The Coming Plague.
When it first appeared, I avoided this book because it seemed depressing and alarmist. In the years since I have had occasion to work on some international communications projects and in the process came to be interested in global public health. Once that happened, reading Garrett's book was essential. She is one of the most informed individuals writing on global public health in the US today.
Amazingly, although the material is sobering and sometimes truly scary, the book is not in the least depressing. It often reads like an adventure story. If you like detective puzzles, you'll be drawn into Garrett's tales of Ebola turning up in Reston, Virginia, and Marburg virus being unwittingly spread by do-gooder missionaries in the Congo.
Irony abounds. It turns out that much of the good we thought we were doing in the developing world was exactly the wrong thing. Garrett relates that many development projects and purported medical "advances" served to promote the evolution of drug resistant bacteria and viruses, while also raising wildly unrealistic expectations for the eradication of disease among the public and the medical establishment. The results are the return of diseases we thought were gone for good, such as TB and -- get this -- bubonic plague, and they are even harder to treat this time around because the microbes are resistent to many antibiotics and drug therapies.
Don't be daunted by the 700+ pages of this book. It is a great read and definitely worth the time you will invest in educating yourself about the the impact of human beings and our technological development on the ecology of microbial environments. I recommend The Coming Plague most highly.
One of the Four Horsemen.......2006-08-30
I read this book when it first came out and lost it when a friend didn't return it. This a fascinating book and since it was first published SARS and Bird Flu has entered our world. If you are prone to panic attacks or nightmares don't read this book because the author did a fantastic job at research and has revealed our future and the diseases that will alter it.
Superb research.......2006-08-07
This book is superb for a number of reasons but the meticulous research behind it really stands out. There is not an idea or suggested proposition that is not referenced to one - and sometimes - mulitple sources. The tentive conclusions that are laid out are suggested only after exhaustive research and tightly logical arguments.
It is not just the research and the logic, however, that makes this book so good. The book is well written and conveys the difficult subject matter of emerging, infectious diseases in a highly readable but detailed and informative matter.
The book is also laid out in a very logical fashion. In different chapters it covers everything from the etiology of new diseases to methods of transmission to social and cultural factors involved in their spread to the drama of in-field investigation of new and fiercely lethal pathogens.
The book also explores the most recent research on the evolution of new diseases, with discoveries that may portend revolutions in the understanding the natural world.
In short, this is an indespensible work for anyone wishing to understand the emergence of new diseases and cutting edge science in the modern world.
Book Description
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering.
Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, he points out that most current explanatory strategies, from "cost-effectiveness" to patient "noncompliance," inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving account is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians determined to treat those in need. Infections and Inequalities weds meticulous scholarship with a passion for solutions--remedies for the plagues of the poor and the social maladies that have sustained them.
Customer Reviews:
careless errors, mediocre conclusion.......2006-06-15
By claiming "social reform," Farmer contradicts his stance as an American citizen: Haiti has no money to support its own citizens, that's why the US and others are doing Haiti's job. But, the US has to care for its own citizens as well therefore has to first work on its own AIDS patients within its boundary. If the US does that as its social reform, Haiti instantly dries up.
Irritating mistakes somehow got through inspection: PAligre Dam? PEligre? (P. 174) PuertO Plata? PueltA? (P. 119)
Medical-anthropological approach to HIV & TB illuminates roles of inequality and poverty in spread of disease.......2005-07-11
Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and activist, examines both the way that poverty and inequality result in the spread of HIV and TB today and the flawed justifications for inequitable access to treatment. His ethnographic analysis provides a powerful complement to standard epidemiological work, and this treatise on the danger as well as the immorality of inequity in medical care is largely convincing.
Farmer illustrates several broad themes effectively with case studies from Haiti and Peru. One is the idea that most studies overemphasize individual agency, failing to recognize serious "structural" factors, such as the pressure that extreme poverty exerts on people to engage in unhealthy behaviors and the problems introduced by economic inequality. (One example of the latter is that in unequal countries like Peru, second-line TB drugs are available because of demand by the rich, so doctors also prescribe them to the poor who can only afford them intermittently, which generates drug-resistant strains of the disease.) Another theme is that people in rich nations tend to place heavy weight on "strange" cultural beliefs and customs in explaining high disease prevalence, whereas actual epidemiological research tends to show that these factors carry little weight relative to poverty-related factors. While he uses AIDS in Haiti to illustrate this tendency, it applies perfectly to popular Western conceptions of AIDS in Africa: the popular media tend to emphasize cultural practices such as wife inheritance and a strong sex drive, whereas epidemiological research fails to support a major role for these.
A third theme, which Farmer often trumpets but not as convincingly, is that many of the trade-offs voiced by policymakers are ultimately false. One example is the question of whether to treat tuberculosis with drugs or prevent it (e.g., by investing in economic development). He then uses the success of his clinic in Haiti as an example of both treating and preventing TB. The ultimate argument is that the wealthy have no right to withhold their wealth from the poor. However, he gives us no clear sense of how the resources to generalize this to the world at large should be marshaled. While the trade-off may be philosophically false, the practical application is unclear.
But even without a plan of action, Farmer illuminates key problems in the analysis of infectious disease spread and makes a convincing plea to share the wealth (and the technology).
Wonderful etiological analysis, but unfounded conclusions. .......2004-07-24
Anyone in the public health arena has heard (or even read) of Paul Farmer. The Harvard MD/PhD (Anthropolgy) is indeed a passionate and competant professional who has fresh drive and leads a commendable life in service to humanity. This book seems to be his most popular work (at least on campus of major public health colleges) and it deserves attention and analysis.
Farmer gives systematic treatment of HIV and TB etiology and prevalence in the US and Haiti. More importantly, how those diseases affect the poor in inequitable ways. Peppered with intimate anecdotes and cutting analysis, the book brings hard ideas with the immediacy of the individual plight. He debunks myth of AIDS early history and establishes perspetive for the disease to be viewed/studied in light of the poor and the strucutral violence that (he deems) causes the propensity of the disease in the lower levels of society. He offers solutions and pleas for attention to these 'new plagues' so that the effects can be mitigated for the sake of all humanity.
There are some issues with that perspective. Of course every author brings inherent bias to the writing (either intentional or not), but Farmer makes no apology for his worldview and dismisses opinions of others who are even within the sientific community as he. John Stuart Mill (in "On Liberty") would say that such an attitude is likened to assuming infallibility (which Farmer more or less accuses the attitude of the 'rich' toward the modern plagues). His neo-Marxist tendency completely undermines the state of the world and he therefore addresses his problems from a "the way it should be" approach. That is his prerogative, but taking such an attitude means that his ideas will remain just that: ideas. His lack of pragmatism borders a silent taint of militarism and that approach rarely attracts policy makers, even those on the left.
Farmer assumes that a preponderence of evidence precludes a serious analysis of personal aganecy. No one would argue the conflict of structural violence and the inherent effects on personal agency. Yet, the fact remains that it does exist and it at least needs to be addressed in a thorough matter in order to be a fair treatment of the subject matter.
Furthermore, he needed to address the distal factors (i.e etiology and biology of the diseases) with the proximate (i.e. socio-econimics, etc...) for the book to be of more interest to the lay person. Despite my reservations, it is still a great book to get the reader "out of the box" and see AIDS and TB with the urgency it deserves. Yet, this type of book needs to be in the hands of the lay, and this recommendation would help.
Lastly, Farmer claims on several occasions a foundation of political economy in the analysis of his subject. He is a physician and anthropologist, and without the concurrent opinions of a political-economist to back up his claims, the ideas therein are weak at best. His political-economic opinions may be in line with greats like Marx and Henry George, but he cannot assume the validity of his assumptions just by telling the readership he his resting on such evidence. Several other leading political-economic ideas stand in direct opposition to his conclusions of goverment fixing all health problems to his liking.
All in all, it is hard not to be moved by Farmer's compelling treatment of such horrendous plagues on humanikind. Yet, passion does not always equal pragmatic and working solutions. Therefore, his work will hopefully inspire those who can take his passion to offer clear and viable solutions in the war on these plagues.
Michael Jewell, MPH
Shining a Light.......2004-01-02
Dr. Farmer sums up what you can hear in his lectures (he is an amazing speaker), read in journals, and hear in his interviews: The "modern day plagues" result directly from Structural Violence. I read this book for my culture and health class and could not put it down. He writes with an eloquence unheard of in most anthropologists while at the same time with the passion of a deeply concerned physician. Although in some points the book can get repetitive (as case studies overlap) it is a spectacular, enlightening read that I would recommend to anyone, particularly potential (and current) medical anthropologists.
Complex causality: why people are really at risk for disease.......2000-06-08
Finally Dr. Farmer couples his lucid historical, political and economic analyses of the conditions that put the poor at risk for bad health outcomes, with a plainly indignant calling out of healthcare professionals and healthcare organizations to make honest efforts to understand and remedy conditions which would never be tolerated among the well off in Western nations. In his goundbreaking, earlier books, "AIDS and Accusations," and "The Uses of Haiti," Dr. Farmer matter of factly discusses the global and local structural conditions and misrepresentations which led to the spread of disease and persistent, dismal health conditions in Haiti. In "Infections and Inequality," Dr. Farmer adds moral overtones to incisive, sociopolitical analysis and his characteristic accounts of individuals suffering from disease. The book consequently provides a powerful reflection from a man who has worked in some of the world's poorest regions on what the benefits of medical technology mean for people who have not traditionally had access to them. A powerful, informative read that clearly reflects the years of experience of a physician who has wrestled with the global responsibility of caring for the those who are worst off. An obligatory read for anyone even thinking of working for the impoverished of the world.
Book Description
No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.
In his powerful new book, award-winning historian John M. Barry unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its research, and spellbinding as he weaves multiple narrative strands together. In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward, risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.
The Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley said Barry's last book can “change the way we think.” The Great Influenza may also change the way we see the world.
Customer Reviews:
The real version of "The Stand" by Stephen King.......2007-09-11
I really enjoyed this book as it showed in real life how fast a flu epidemic can spread. One has to realize that this epidemic took place in basically horse and buggy days, people did not travel as much. If you look into your family history, as I did, you may find a relative who died during this time period. After I read this book I discovered a graveyard for a turn of the century orphanage. There were so many children that died, all they could do is put numbers on the gravestones. It made me think how fast a flu epidemic could travel today. The references and facts were an eye opener.
Wow! Very Important Read.......2007-08-31
This book will definitely really make you reconsider the vulnerability of society to an epidemic. What really surprised me was how this single epidemic really kick-started the modern health care system. I had no idea that 100 years ago, it was easier to get certified to be a doctor than it was to go to college - quite literally one could go through a correspondence course. It also traces the development and speaks to the foundation of institutions who, our time, are revered for their stature in modern medicine, such as John Hopkins. It covers a great many aspects of medicine and epidemiology. What this book does best, and is truly refreshing for a history book, is provide insight into the thinking of the time - what role politics and political decisions made in the outbreaks in certain cities. What is truly horrifying is how really vulnerable populations are to influenza. Although we understand it better, actual treatment is still quite limited (prevention seems to be the best hope). A small mutation in the virus could again hammer populations around the world. I took on this book because my grandfather's family was so badly devastated by it. I never really asked enough about it before he passed away and now I wish I had. I recommend this book to anyone interested in epidemiology, medicine, particularly how medicine has advanced in the last 100 years, particularly in the US, or if, like me, your family history may have been effected by this. The most frightening aspect is the astounding speed with which this virus spread and the corresponding mortality rate that it brought with it. Tie that in with its extreme, and I mean extreme contagiousness and one finds a really frightening scenario. I can't imagine a world where people are dying so fast they can't even bury the bodies, doctors and nurses are afflicted so badly that they die almost as fast as the patients, that almost nobody really understands how the contagion is spread and people shun one another - neighbors, even family members. What is even more frightening is that this happened less than one hundred years ago. It really makes you think. It really makes you consider how truly vulnerable we all are.
a true horror story.......2007-08-17
First, with all the fearmongering about pandemics in the last couple of years, it is nice to read about the most deadly epidemic the world has ever known. It's not real comforting, but it is better than the fear Fox News was pandering at Rita/Katrina and the bird flu. It's a great book, one that should have been written, though it could have used a better editor. The book does jump around and there is a lot that probably could have been cut, but it is a great book dealing with a complex subject.
Frightening and informative.......2007-08-13
A facinating window into a horrifying period that we've almost intentionally downplayed in our histories. It's especially worthwhile given the recent concerns about an inevitable pandemic. We are better equipped in some ways to deal with a worldwide pandemic, but in many others we are even more fragile. Viruses, like trade, move much more quickly now.
Excellent Book.......2007-08-01
I learned a vast amount about disease, the medical system, and medecine in general. One of the best and most informative books I have ever read. Well-researched and easy to read.
Book Description
The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind's active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed? William Ruddiman's provocative new book argues that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years--as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture.
The "Ruddiman Hypothesis" will spark intense debate. We learn that the impact of farming on greenhouse-gas levels, thousands of years before the industrial revolution, kept our planet notably warmer than if natural climate cycles had prevailed--quite possibly forestalling a new ice age.
Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is the first book to trace the full historical sweep of human interaction with Earth's climate. Ruddiman takes us through three broad stages of human history: when nature was in control; when humans began to take control, discovering agriculture and affecting climate through carbon dioxide and methane emissions; and, finally, the more recent human impact on climate change. Along the way he raises the fascinating possibility that plagues, by depleting human populations, also affected reforestation and thus climate--as suggested by dips in greenhouse gases when major pandemics have occurred. The book concludes by looking to the future and critiquing the impact of special interest money on the global warming debate.
Eminently readable and far-reaching in argument, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum shows us that even as civilization developed, we were already changing the climate in which we lived.
Customer Reviews:
This author's point is quite different that what we usually hear.......2007-10-01
In the current furor of so much smug certainty about climate change (from all over the place), here is a gent - and scientist - with a different slant. We humans indeed do affect the global climate, he claims, but we started doing so a very long time ago. He concludes the beginning somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago. The first effects came from man's developing agricultural products: from burning forests to create farmlands mainly, thus putting tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Then there came the insertion of a much stronger greenhouse gas, methane, from cattle husbandry and rice growing. This thesis has and will certainly spark much more discussion, and more importantly, research. Mr. Ruddiman had written a summary of this in Scientific American Magazine previously. Much of this book is his discussion to back up his thesis.
Maybe the best strength of this book is its readability. The author's style is easy to understand, as is most of his science. The science gets a little more obscure when he is defending his stance against selected opposing arguments from fellow scientists. This is unfortunate, because some readers will come away from that chapter wondering if he covered the debate, or just danced around them. If your political tendencies tend to the left, you might be upset that the author does not loudly and immediately condemn modern western industrial man for his evil environmental ways. If you tend to the right, you might be upset that he points a definite finger at homo sapiens for being a contributor to climate change. This is why reading this is good for everyone! Since Ruddiman is a scientist, we can assume that he is merely trying to convince us that his research is on the mark. Fair enough.
Unfairly enough, the author-scientist does not quite succeed in keeping his balance as the book gets closer and closer to the end. In spite of his claim that he kept his editorializing until the epilog, the last chapters paint a despairing picture of mankind and what we are doing - and cannot do for the future - to our environment. For a scientist, it should strike the reader as odd that he wrings his hands at the thought of humans never being able to solve our way out of a basically scientific-technological issue: climate change. The fact that there is no serious mention in this book of nuclear energy, low-fuel consumption single transportation, or the many current greenhouse gas absorption projects, clues us that these matters are out of his field. Still, the basic point of this book is new and refreshing, and is worth the price of purchase.
Climate change clarified.......2007-04-12
In a fast 194 pages, with 41 clear illustrations, Professor William Ruddiman gives us the benefit of his many years of experience in Environmental Sciences studying the onset and causes of climatic changes in general, and in particular with regard to the basis of global warming. His presentation is excellent and obviously refined by years of teaching and investigation about this subject matter. You should read this book if you are interested in the evidence about our changing climate, without a sensational biased twist. If you are interested in any of the following questions, you will enjoy learning from this book: What are the influences on our climate created by the earth's wobbling as it travels through its elliptical orbit around the sun? When did global warming really begin? What were the influences of human activities such as early agriculture, wars, plagues, and recent industrialization? How do the oceans and atmosphere interact to produce or buffer climate changes? What are the likely effects of melting sea ice on our homes by the shores? What prices are we going to have to accept in order to clean up our mess? Obviously there has been much said in sound bites currently in the media, but the discussion can be greatly improved by understanding the clear and sensible approach of Dr. Ruddiman.
Turning back the clock on the Anthropocene. .......2007-03-31
When we talk about anthropogenic global warming, we tend to be referring to the dramatic rise in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial era, some two hundred years ago. Scientists often refer to this apparent change in the atmosphere as the "Anthropocene," the beginning of significant human impact on the earth.
But what if the Anthropocene started not with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, but some eight thousand years ago?
William Ruddiman, a senior climatologist at the University of Virginia, makes that very argument in his book Plows, Plagues, & Petroleum. Looking back at past paleoclimate data and computer models, Ruddiman noticed that at around 8,000 years ago, carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere should have gone down in association with changes in the Earth's orbital patterns known as Milankovitch Cycles. Instead, he noticed that concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane actually increase, albeit slightly and gradually. Finding no plausible hypothesis for this in his knowledge of earth science, Ruddiman turned to archaeology for clues, and found that the rises in carbon dioxide and methane corresponded with the beginnings of deforestation and landscape burning for agriculture, and the formation of Asia's first rice paddies. Even this relatively small change in human land use (compared to today's scale) was enough to start a long-term trend in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and possibly contributed to the prevention of the next ice age, which he argues is overdue.
It's a compelling argument, and one that Ruddiman describes in an accessible format without being thin on the scientific details. But Ruddiman doesn't stop there; he continues to examine the seemingly anomalous blips in the carbon dioxide record up through the modern age, in an attempt to explain the unusual (but slight) drops in the record that have taken place in the last thousand years or so. Some such blips, Ruddiman argues, follow major pandemics in human history, such as the Bubonic Plague. Following major decreases in human population, large areas of farmland would return to forested conditions and less wood and other fuels would have been burned, which may have accounted for the decrease in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Ruddiman proposes that this drop may have been responsible for the Little Ice Age.
These thought exercises, backed up with computer models and ice core records, are extremely compelling. Ruddiman of course acknowledges that correlation is not causation; that is, simply because two things happen at the same time, doesn't mean that one caused the other to happen. My only significant criticism is with the title; "control" implies a deliberate attempt on the part of humans to forestall the next ice age, which certainly wasn't the case. Otherwise, the book is concise and well-written, and has an excellent reference list (a feature often neglected by popular science writers).
Ruddiman's ideas have caused a lot of healthy debate and inquiry among climate scientists, and have caused a number of people to rethink the assumption that human impact was negligible until the Industrial era. Researchers will continue to test these hypotheses (Ruddiman and colleagues continue to work on the problem, and are now also looking at the impact of the domestication of livestock animals), and while the jury is out on the "Early Anthropocene" hypothesis, in the meantime the ideas (and the book) make for good thinking and great conversation.
~Jacquelyn Gill
How to squeeze a theory that doesn't fit into an old shoe.......2007-03-22
It is regrettable that Ruddiman went unchallenged for so many years at the University of Virginia since I suspect that he might have left the door open for alternative ideas than the conclusions he erroneously came to in writing this book. While Ruddiman has been advancing his theories about mankind's impact on the climate for many years, his conclusions have now been shown to be yet more bad science in a field where politics, money and media hype have ruled for many years.
There are many examples of this in this book, which does not include references to the most recent findings of ice cores which show that the earth's atmosphere has had concentrations of CO2 nearly 20 times today's levels, long before mankind climbed out of the trees. Ruddiman suggests that all of a sudden mankind's short time of walking upright and doing things such as farming, land clearing, building cars, etc. has had a greater impact on the climate than other, far more natural forces have had over the billions of years that the earth has been in existence. While he has a lot of charts and graphs, and he has a lot of history in this rarified field, he really comes to some very suspect conclusions using some very selective observations. And of course the most recent findings regarding the relationship of CO2 and warming, totally debunk the theories and conclusions that Ruddiman espouses about the causes of global warming. ( Increases in CO2 are a lagging indicator of warming, not the cause.)
Is the earth warming up? It looks like it is again, just as it has done hundreds of times in the past, before it cooled down only to heat up again. And no matter how many trillions of dollars worth of "carbon credits" that the signators of the Kyoto Treaty exchange amongst themselves, or Al Gore buys from some peasant as the modern day equivalent of "indulgences" that the Catholic Church sold to atone for sin, the earth will continue to warm, until it cools again.
In reading the overleaf of scientists who agree with Ruddiman's finding, you find the usual cast of CO2 advocates who dismiss legitimate scientific research as being "bought off" by "big oil" while at the same time they live off billions of dollars of taxpayer funded "research" which consists of a lot of junk science produced by hundreds of thousands of scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, news organizations, among others to perpetuate the biggest scam in the history of mankind. It is the scientific equivalent to the "poverty industry" where billions are expended on social experiments which have largely failed to do anything but make "social activists" rich and keep their vassals in serfdom. And irony of irony, much of the CO2 hysteria started with Maggie Thatcher who hyped "global warming" from carbon fuels when she was fighting the trade unions who were producing coal as a reason to go for nuclear energy back when the scientific consensus at the time was the coming ice age.
If you are looking for a book which is actually up to date, and actually has hundreds of references to real research (which this book does not have) you might try Fred Singer and Dennis Avery's book on Unstoppable Global Warming among many, many others who completely disagree with Ruddiman's oft repeated lie that most scientists accept the view that human effects on global climate began during the 1800s and have grown steadily since that time. Nothing could be further from the truth. The earth has had hundreds of episodes of global warming and cooling over many millions of years, some of them far more extreme, and far longer lasting, than anything even the most hysterical hucksters of global warming being caused by CO2 shout about today. It is unfortunate for Ruddiman that he wrote this book before the facts that prove him wrong were discovered in real research.
A great introduction and overview with ample speculation.......2007-01-09
The first half of 'Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum' provides a wonderfully concise and accessible introduction to climate changes science and climate-human interactions. The second half is more speculative and explores how much humans have altered climate over the past 8000 years, with an emphasis on back-of-the-envelope calculations. Others will disagree, but I find such speculative writing important and enjoyable. Climate science is not for the faint of heart yet Ruddiman makes a compelling argument that an educated audience can evaluate and form their own opinions. My only significant complaint is that many of the graphs are very poorly labeled.
Amazon.com
No small themes for historian William McNeill: he is a writer of big, sweeping books, from
The Rise of the West to
The History of the World.
Plagues and Peoples considers the influence of infectious diseases on the course of history, and McNeill pays special attention to the Black Death of the 13th and 14th centuries, which killed millions across Europe and Asia. (At one point, writes McNeill, 10,000 people in Constantinople alone were dying each day from the plague.) With the new crop of plagues and epidemics in our own time, McNeill's quiet assertion that "in any effort to understand what lies ahead the role of infectious disease cannot properly be left out of consideration" takes on new significance.
Book Description
Upon its original publication, Plagues and Peoples was an immediate critical and popular success, offering a radically new interpretation of world history as seen through the extraordinary impact--political, demographic, ecological, and psychological--of disease on cultures. From the conquest of Mexico by smallpox as much as by the Spanish, to the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe, the history of disease is the history of humankind. With the identification of AIDS in the early 1980s, another chapter has been added to this chronicle of events, which William McNeill explores in his new introduction to this updated editon.
Thought-provoking, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Plagues and Peoples is that rare book that is as fascinating as it is scholarly, as intriguing as it is enlightening. "A brilliantly conceptualized and challenging achievement" (Kirkus Reviews), it is essential reading, offering a new perspective on human history.
Customer Reviews:
Bio-Materialist History.......2007-10-11
Other reviews have captured the breadth of this powerful and provoking analysis; I can't add anything more. However, one unoticed aspect is how McNeill silently engages with Marx's economic materialist analysis by showing before you can have a base, let alone a superstructure, you must have control of or a standoff with infectious diseases. Thus in some ways, his dialectical interplay between macro- and micro- parasitism is in fact even more "radical" than Marx, if "radical' is used in the original sense (to get at the root). What is disappointing is that nobody has followed up since using McNeill's fertile insights.
Amazing How a Few Invisible Germs Changed the World.......2007-01-19
The main thesis of William McNeill's "Plagues and People" is that disease states and the general health of various regions of the world throughout history have shaped social practices, religious thinking and political structures -- even leading to the rise and fall of entire civilizations.
MacNeill's startling, well-defended claims are fascinating, eminently quotable and worthy of re-reading. For example, the Greeks cultivated olives and grapes, which require little manual labor. Their olive oil and wine was a valuable currency around the ancient world, saving their island from the terrible scourges of disease suffered by isolated, overworked agrarian societies without urban-honed immunological defenses. He goes so far as to say that this gave the Greeks the freedom to create their highly developed culture and unparalleled psychological insights.
McNeill's august text has influenced many other scholars, but the lay reader will find this romp through history, well, infectiously entertaining. Highly recommended.
Bugs, germs and parasites.......2006-10-11
Long before Jared Diamond captured headlines and dominated bestseller lists with 'Gun, Germs and Steel," the distinguished University of Chicago historian William McNeill published "Plagues and Peoples" that carried a similar message, albeit heavily focused on the "germs" part of the equation.
McNeill's central thesis is that bacteriology has had a profound impact on the course of human history and will continue to be a fundamental component of human affairs forever. In short, communicable disease can never be fully defeated. As human population continues to grow and as technology and social revolutions change our behavior and modes of interaction, micro parasites will exploit the new opportunities to infect and kills us. He argues that humans and micro parasites have been engaged in nearly continuous combat for advantage since human beings first left the cradle of civilization in Africa.
In making this argument, McNeill offers up an interesting explanation for Africa's pitiful condition up to the present day. He claims that humans developed in the heat and moisture of the African climate and over time an ecological balance developed between man and micro parasite. The well-established micro parasitic infections were nature's way of ensuring that no one species dominated. It was only when humans discovered clothing and began moving to colder climates that did not so easily support traditional disease did the battle for primacy between man and bug begin. McNeill states that even today Africa is an example of a well functioning ecological balance where the tsetse fly and the sleeping sickness it carries, for instance, still determines the range where humans can penetrate.
McNeill stresses that the history of disease is more than simply the story of epidemics and consequent die-off of large swaths of a population. He shows that micro parasites have touched a broad spectrum of human behavior and cultural development. For instance, he argues that today's major world religions, especially Christianity and Hinduism, thrived in the epidemic disease experiences of the first century AD. Those religions provided some explanation to the apparent randomness of sudden death from a variety of ailments and it offered the hope of salvage and eternal life after death. Moreover, McNeill argues that epidemic diseases that leveled Aztec and Incan culture accelerated the acceptance of Christianity in the New World by the native population. After all, what clearer sign of the power of the European God than the immunity of the white men from the diseases that swept through the vulnerable native communities.
McNeill also demonstrates how fear of disease - particularly the global cholera outbreak of the 1830s that killed so quickly and horribly - promoted massive public health programs that eventually had a tremendous impact on industrial and economic growth. The improved sanitary conditions allowed cities to flourish and workers to remain healthy and productive. He also argues that an army's ability to conquer disease in its ranks was likely more important than its ability to conquer its enemy in open combat. Until the 20th century, the vast majority of deaths in war were the result of disease, sometimes accounting for over tens times the combat deaths. The army that could prevent such devastation had an incredible advantage.
The major breakthrough for humans, McNeill argues, was the period 1300-1700. That four century period witnessed two critical transportation revolutions: the Eurasian land route developed by the Mongols and the European-led sea-based transportation. The relatively rapid dissemination of people meant the rapid dissemination of disease. The homogenization of disease between Europe, the Middle East, India and China led to the "domestication" of epidemic disease and marked a fundamental breakthrough in world history. This interaction led many diseases to transition from crippling epidemics to manageable endemics that took the form of childhood diseases; the same diseases that decimated the New World native populations when they were exposed in the 16th century.
Lastly, it is interesting to read how long it took humans to understand how disease was spread. The fact that germs are invisible obviously played a central role in their ability to survive. But just as importantly were the different varieties of contagion that confounded the ability to explain the spread of the illness. Because some diseases are spread by human contact, such as tuberculosis and small pox, and others by insects, such as the flea for bubonic plague and the mosquito for malaria and yellow fever, while others are spread by contaminated food and water, such as cholera, no simply solution seemed to work.
After reading "Plagues and Peoples" it is difficult to see world history the same as before. Modern scholars have poked a variety of holes in McNeill's arguments but the central thesis that bacteria and viruses have often been the causative agents of technological, social and political upheaval is difficult to refute.
wordy, interesting.......2006-06-16
William Mcneill presents a different and mind-expanding take on disease: microbes, humans, and governments all function similarly to facilitate their optimal survival and expansion. When the opportunistic structure gets too greedy, it may overwhelm the host. With time and familiarity, host and parasite usually come to an uneasy alliance, which allows the survival of each. If you read "Plagues and Peoples" with this thesis in mind, it is a very interesting book. If you lose sight of the thesis, it is too easy to get bogged down in the author's extremely baroque writing style. A few reviewers concluded that the book was hard for them to comprehend because they were high school aged readers. As an older adult, compulsive reader, with a lot of patience, I have to say I experienced the same problem with this book. I checked the biographical material on the author to see if English was his second language. I felt the book read as if translated. I found myself mentally simplifying almost every sentence, not because of the complexity of the idea being conveyed, but because of unnecessary verbage. "Plagues and Peoples" does contain loads information on the history of mankind and disease, within the framework of an interesting thesis. I just feel that simpler wording would have helped the book read smoother. Another very fascinating history of man's interaction with microbes which is much more reader friendly is "Men and Microbes".
Epidemic is historic.......2006-06-13
I bought this book from Amazon, and I read it here, in Brazil.This book is really good, about this subject.In fact, epidemic killed far more peoples than all wars and dictators together.Lenin or Hitler were small killers than smallpox.In fact, smallpox exterminated, more than 70% of indian population of Mexico in XVI Century.Illness decided wars, religions, poltics and economics for all the history.
This book is very good, but being writen in 1975, this book is now a little outdated.A new sexual desease(AIDS) became a reality and after DDT's banishment, malaria is back and strong in Africa,Asia and Latin America.
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