Humans have done amazing things in their development: stopped traveling in search of food, created great cities, mastered many skills. And disease has been with us every step of the way.
We have certainly been able to get some diseases under control--the jury's still out on COVID-19--and others continue to bedevil us.
Kyle Harper, a historian of the ancient world, traces how diseases have affected humankind, and how we have affected them in return, in Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History.
The author visits with an overview of a history of us and our dangerous germs.