Jonathan Kennedy (1)

The history of slavery goes back far beyond the European colonization of the Caribbean. It emerged soon after the adoption of settled agriculture and should be conceptualized as the extension of the logic of domestication of animals to members of our own species. When men and women become slaves they were no longer treated as fellow human beings but as beasts of burden. They could be worked to the point of exhaustion, beaten into submission and exchanged for something else. But there was something new and peculiar about American slavery. For thousands of years, skin color had no bearing on who was seen as a suitable candidate for enslavement. It was in the Americas that people of African origin became associated with servitude for the first time.… (more)

Enjoyed this book, though I found the title a bit misleading. Was expecting perhaps 8 discrete diseases but I should have focused more on the history of the world part….The author illustrates the effects of disease from the time when there were multiple human species up to the present.
He has a strong anti religion bias which seems to cause him to occasionally slant parts of the stories he tells, but everything is generally well researched and organized…. If you only read one disease book….make it guns, germs and steel……and if only two,, try the Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett, but keep this on the list….it goes furthest back
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I had great hopes for this book, but the more I read the further those hopes took a nosedive. For starters, one would think that the book would focus on 8 plagues in some detail. However, the author divided time into 8 periods and discussed, too briefly IMHO, plagues and diseases in that time period and how they shaped/caused history. The author claims that humans no longer lay eggs because 10-12 million years ago (sigh) a virus entered our bodies and destroyed that function. By the end of the book, there was no respect remaining for the book or author. I can honestly say that I think the author needs some help/counseling if he believes his own ideas: China did a better job of controlling Covid-19 than the UK or US. Their numbers are better than the UK or US. They could take some lessons from the Chinese. Socialism is the only way that disease is going to be eradicated. Does he really believe that China reported all their cases? This author had a political agenda and it was quite obvious to this reader. Sorry I wasted my time and raised my BP;)! 304 pages… (more)