This sweeping history is Kennedy's debut, and a powerfully argued one... Pathogenesis sets out, like Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens or Peter Frankopan's recent The Earth Transformed, to reinterpret the entire history of mankind... A fascinating and pacey run through the history of humanity from an unfamiliar perspective. -- Book of the Week * Sunday Times * This book challenges some of the greatest cliches about colonialism and leaves you wondering why you ever gave them the time of day. A revelation, and also that rarest thing, a science title that is entirely comprehensible and often a pleasure to read. -- Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland Pathogenesis is superbly written. Kennedy seamlessly weaves together scientific and historical research, and his confident authorial voice is sure to please readers of Yuval Noah Harari or Rutger Bregman. -- David Robson * The Times * Thrilling and eye-opening. From neolithic diseases to Covid-19, Jonathan Kennedy explores the enormous role played by some of the tiniest life on Earth: the power of plagues in shaping world history. -- Professor Lewis Dartnell, bestselling author of Origins and Being Human From the fall of Rome to the Spanish conquest of the Americas to the industrial revolution, germs have played as much a role in history as guns, generals and "great men"... Jonathan Kennedy restores the microbes of infectious disease to their rightful place in the story of human evolution and the rise and fall of civilisations. Science and history at its best. -- Dr Mark Honigsbaum, author of The Pandemic Century

Jonathan Kennedy teaches global public health at Queen Mary University of London. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge. His interdisciplinary research has been published in leading medical, public health, sociology and history journals, and he has written for newspapers including the Guardian and El Pais. Pathogenesis is his first book.