Jonathan Walker

Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues all around us, in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality.

In the early 1960s, Hallowell, Maine was a sleepy small city on the Kennebec River. Dip Barrett ran a beer store where he socialized with local criminals and took bets for horse racing tracks around the state. His business and the community are turned upside down when the body of a young man is found in the Kennebec River....