Rats, Lice and History

"Swords and lances, arrows, machine guns and even high explosives have had far less power over the fate of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea and the yellow-fever mosquito." Both shocking and entertaining, this masterpiece of popular science writing tells the tragic story of the struggle between humanity and its humble but deadly enemies, the organisms of disease. Zinsser shows how infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. While from the human perspective an invading pathogen was abnormal, from the perspective of the pathogen it was perfectly normal. From the pestilence which contributed to the downfall of Rome to the dancing manias of medieval Europe, the aristocracy’s fashion for wearing wigs and the role of typhus in the First World War, Zinsser reveals just how disease and epidemics have shaped human history.

"Swords and lances, arrows, machine guns and even high explosives have had far less power over the fate of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea and the yellow-fever mosquito." Both shocking and entertaining, this masterpiece of popular science writing tells the tragic story of the struggle between humanity and its humble but deadly enemies, the organisms of disease. Zinsser shows how infectious disease simply represented an attempt of a living organism to survive. While from the human perspective an invading pathogen was abnormal, from the perspective of the pathogen it was perfectly normal. From the pestilence which contributed to the downfall of Rome to the dancing manias of medieval Europe, the aristocracy’s fashion for wearing wigs and the role of typhus in the First World War, Zinsser reveals just how disease and epidemics have shaped human history.