Study Guide: Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill (SuperSummary)
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Study Guide: Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill (SuperSummary)
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Narrated by:
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Steven Spicher
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By:
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SuperSummary
About this listen
SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality instructional study guides for challenging works of literature. This audio study guide for Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the book’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as civilization as an exchange between host bodies and parasites and an ecological framework for history. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics.
Plagues and Peoples is a work of nonfiction that argues that patterns of disease are as great an influence on human history as war, agriculture, and politics.
This audio study guide presents the same expert content - written by experienced teachers, professors, and literary scholars - in an easy-to-access audio format. SuperSummary study guides demonstrate an authoritative voice, present expert analysis, offer big picture ideas, and help listeners understand a work’s underlying meanings and conclusions.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 329
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
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The Nutmeg's Curse
- Parables for a Planet in Crisis
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis.
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5 out of 5 stars
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performance....
- By Bonnie on 11-15-22
By: Amitav Ghosh
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The Journey of Humanity
- The Origins of Wealth and Inequality
- By: Oded Galor
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Why are humans the only species to have escaped—only very recently—the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Galor’s gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in the human story a mere two hundred years ago.
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4 out of 5 stars
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promoting innovation and industrial disease
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-24
By: Oded Galor
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 864
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 719
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 714
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,862
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,400
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,389
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
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Nonzero
- The Logic of Human Destiny
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 414
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4 out of 5 stars 308
At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
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A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 415
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 366
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is NOT Racism!...
- By Douglas on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- By: Spencer Wells
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 69
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
- By Alan on 06-23-10
By: Spencer Wells
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The Revenge of Geography
- What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 748
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 649
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Story4 out of 5 stars 648
In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Painful to listen to
- By Bookworm on 12-27-13
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Ancestral Journeys
- The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings (Revised and Updated Edition)
- By: Jean Manco
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 79
This paradigm-shifting book paints a spirited portrait of a restless people that challenges our established ways of looking at Europe's past. The story is more complex than at first believed, with new evidence suggesting that the European gene pool was stirred vigorously multiple times. Genetic clues are also enhancing our understanding of European mobility in epochs with written records, including the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the spread of the Slavs, and the adventures of the Vikings.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Needs pictures.
- By Ray on 11-21-20
By: Jean Manco
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By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
- The Birth of Eurasia
- By: Barry Cunliffe
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering more than 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the 13th century AD.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Remarkable research!
- By B. Dillon on 07-21-22
By: Barry Cunliffe
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The Human Tide
- How Population Shaped the Modern World
- By: Paul Morland
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
The rise and fall of the British Empire; the emergence of America as a superpower; the ebb and flow of global challenges from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia. These are the headlines of history, but they cannot be properly grasped without understanding the role that population has played. The Human Tide shows how periods of rapid population transition - a phenomenon that first emerged in the British Isles but gradually spread across the globe - shaped the course of world history.
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2 out of 5 stars
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dry
- By Ralph C. on 05-02-19
By: Paul Morland
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Why Geography Matters
- More Than Ever
- By: Harm de Blij
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
In recent years our world has seen transformations of all kinds: intense climate change accompanied by significant weather extremes; deadly tsunamis caused by submarine earthquakes; unprecedented terrorist attacks; costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a terrible and overlooked conflict in Equatorial Africa costing millions of lives; an economic crisis threatening the stability of the international system.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A book that needs more than just narration
- By Organic Design on 06-10-15
By: Harm de Blij
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Harmony
- A New Way of Looking at Our World
- By: Charles HRH The Prince of Wales
- Narrated by: Charles HRH The Prince of Wales
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
For the first time, HRH The Prince of Wales shares his views on how our most pressing modern challenges - from climate change to poverty - are rooted in mankind's disharmony with nature, presenting a compelling case that the solution lies in our ability to regain a balance with the world around us. With its holistic approach, this provocative and well-reasoned book takes the discussion of sustainability and climate change in a new direction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Excellent Exploration
- By Sara on 03-31-16
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The Decline and Rise of Democracy
- A Global History from Antiquity to Today
- By: David Stastavage
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer - democratic practices were present in many places at many other times. David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished - and when and why they declined - can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative
- By Frank on 12-22-20
By: David Stastavage
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The Mosquito
- A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator
- By: Timothy C. Winegard
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 19 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 528
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 465
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 462
Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquito’s reign through human history.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Major Disappointment
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-19