Sign-In
Cart
The Human Condition: An Ecological and Historical View
Paperback
Series: Princeton Legacy Library, Book 5471
ISBN13: 9780691655673
Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
Published: Mar 26 2019
Pages: 96
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.19 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
A distinguished scholar and the well-known author of The Rise of the West and Plagues and Peoples, William McNeill has won widespread recgonition for his ideas on the role of disease in history. In this elegantly and incisively written work, originally delivered as the Bland-Lee Lactures at Clark University, he provides a provocative interpretation in world history using the concept of parasitism. By comparing the biological organisms that compete with human beings for food or feed directly upon them (microparasites) with those people or groups who seize goods or compel services from other human beings (macroparasites), Professor McNeill shows how changes in the patterns of parasitism have affected human populations in different regions of the world throughout history.
These advances not only increased the number and variety of microparasites; they also opened the way for macroparasites, that is, the transfer of food by those who produce it to those who produce it to those who consume it without themselves having worked in the fields. What then began as a symbiotic relationship quickly became an exploitative one. As the author points out, the high yield and dependability of irrigation plowing tied farmers to the land quite effectually and made such populations easy targets for tax and rent collectors. Hence human society in its civilized form came to be fundamentally divided between hosts and parasites, the ruled and the rulers.
Against this conceptual background of the enveloping balances between microparasites and macroparasites that have limited human access to food and energy, Profesor McNeill draws a new historical picture of the human condition. In doing so, he considers the development of command versus market economics in the mobilization of human and material resources, and speculates about the direction in which these resources are coordinated today.
William H. McNeill is Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Beveridge, Bruce
Braunschweiger, Art
Hall, Steve
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Detrow, Scott
Burke, Daniel
Hardcover
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Venditozzi, Zoe
Mitchell, Claire
Paperback
The East Wing: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America's First Ladies
Moaveni, Azadeh
Hardcover
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Drury, Bob
Clavin, Tom
Hardcover
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
America in 25 Revolutions: The Story of Our Imperfect Nation's 250-Year Quest to Become a More Perfect Union
Graff, Garrett M.
Hardcover
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Paperback
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice
Livingstone, Natalie
Hardcover
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
Aristocracy, American Style: Class Privilege and the Persistence of Elite Power
Isenberg, Nancy
Hardcover
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
The Elections That Changed the World: Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live
Bash, Dana
Hardcover
The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science
Chapman, Kit
Hardcover
The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century
Pettegree, Andrew
Hardcover
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country--And Led Us to Today
Kaufman, Jonathan
Hardcover
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
Hazrat, Florence
Hardcover
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
McGilchrist, Iain
Paperback
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Shetterly, Margot Lee
Paperback
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover