Microbes: Shaping the Past and Controlling the Future

The book "Pathogenesis" by Jonathan Kennedy argues that the reason Homo sapiens prevailed over other human species is due to their superior immune systems, which were exposed to a greater array of microbes in Africa. Infections have shaped fundamental elements of mammalian biology, and human civilizations have been shaped by disease. The introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90% fall in the population in the Americas, from about 60.5m in 1500 to 6m a century later. Kennedy marshals a dizzying range of material, from the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe to the defeat of the British army by American revolutionaries in Yorktown in 1781.