McNeill’s World History of Disease

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: McNeill’s World History of Disease

Thursday 31 October 2024 is the 107th anniversary of the birth of William Hardy McNeill (31 October 1917 – 08 July 2016), who was born in Vancouver, BC, on this date in 1917.

McNeill’s influential book Plagues and Peoples is both a specialist history of the role of infectious diseases in human history and a grand narrative of the whole of human history from prehistory to the present. I place McNeill’s work in the tradition of naturalistic history that extends from Montesquieu through Hans Zinsser and Ellsworth Huntington to Jared Diamond.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD
Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/
Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/eVJ4dXbfaOb

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