Plagues and Peoples by William McNeill

Plagues and Peoples is the chronicling of the history of mankind as never before attempted - from a microbiological perspective. Starting with the diseases of our simian ancestors in the trees of Africa to the influence of the Romans and Mongols to current AIDS epidemic, this book includes everything. McNeill puts entirely new perspectives on the events that truly shaped the world, choosing to focus on the diseases that have most greatly impacted human populations and migrations. When we consider that up until world war 2 the majority of war casualties were from disease rather than bullets, we can begin to comprehend just how drastic and often underplayed these diseases are in the scope of history. Although the word usage and sentence structure can at times be verbose and tricky to comprehend, it pays off greatly to endure. As a student of biology and a worker in a virology lab, I fully endorse this book as the best I have found in the genre.