Will I love Pathogenesis?

By far, this is my non-fiction book of the year. Intelligent, informative and cogently argued by an expert in global public health.
I love to read about the long sweep of human history and muse on how, why and when the great revolutionary changes occurred. Paleolithic migrations and the ultimate dominance of Homo sapiens, from nomadic foragers to settled farmers, village to city-life, the rise and fall of empires, kick-starting the age of enlightenment and industrial revolution, from feudalism to capitalism… and much more. Kennedy argues that plague and pestilence have been responsible for such momentous transformations.
The world is… show more.

Almost every profession today consists of specialties, and those who practice within the bounds of a single specialty interact very little with those in other specialties. That’s true of history, as it is of physics, biology, and so many other fields of study. Generalists are rare, and those who approach their work taking a truly global view rarer still. Kennedy is a brilliant exception. In this book, which spans tens of thousands of years, he challenges some of the fundamental assumption we take for granted about our shared past.

My wife disagrees, but I find that reading about a topic helps to ease the trauma of dealing with it. I appreciate Pathogenesis because it puts recent events in context.

This book argues that mass outbreaks of disease have made our world, past and present. Yet, they seem to recede into memory just as suddenly as they appeared. I feel it now. It's a mistake to ignore the scars they leave on humanity. Needless to say, recent events should give us all much to consider. A strong central thesis and some memorable anecdotes make this a worthwhile, timely read.