Jonathan Kennedy is a professor at Queen Mary College in London. He teaches Politics and Global Health, and he has a PhD in Sociology. Pathogenesis is his first book.
In this book the author charts both the evolution of human beings and the evolution of human societies in conjunction with the occurrence of pandemics throughout our history. Yellow fever, malaria and the plague feature most prominently in this narrative, with later chapters focusing on more modern maladies such as cholera, AIDS and COVID-19. The book concludes with a short chapter on future pandemics, and how our current institutions might address the appearance of such pandemics by putting more collective emphasis on public health.
It's a very readable book and I got through it very quickly. I was, however, a bit disappointed by the weight given to both Antiquity and the Age of Exploration, since I was reading the book for more perspective on COVID-19. A historical analysis was definitely warranted, but this book doesn't have much to say about pandemics during this or the previous century. That, I think, was the kind of discussion this book should have been building toward.
I'd recommend Pathogenesis, but this really isn't the sort of post-COVID retrospective I was looking for.
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