I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

This was not the book I expected to read. I expected more information of how each of those 6 plagues effected their victims, what sorts of care they got, and what percentage died, along with any public health (as it existed in the time and place) measures were attempted. Instead, I got a lot of sociology and discussions of racism and sexism. I do not dispute that racism, sexism, and nationalism play a key part in stemming disease, along with wealth disparity and non-white over-representation in prisons – a petri dish for any contagious disease. I expected the book to focus on the diseases and good and bad attempts at determining their cause and cures.

There were many infamous plagues throughout history that were left out, including the Justinian Plague in the 6th century.

There is a great deal about the medicalization of blackness, or non-whiteness. There is evidence of sexism within medicine, as evidenced by who drugs are tested on, the vast differences in how men and women are treated at hospitals when having heart attacks. The sociology is important, but I was looking to read of the science of the diseases.

I thought a better job could have been done with the racial protests over such things as the George Floyd murder protests during Covid-19. That was one thing that some white racists used to show that it’s not a real “thing”, as no Covid outbreaks were reported from these political actions. Perhaps more could have been said about that?

Still, it’s very showing how history rhymes with itself, in how some ebola deniers existed just as how there are Covid deniers now. They’re in a different place, in a different time, but it’s something “they” came up with, and resistance to vaccines. It’s notable that distrust of public health goes along with nationalism. The obsession with monkey meat and other bush meat in Ebola is the same as the current obsession with Haitians eating dogs and cats as an attempt to "other-ize".

The author has a "different" writing style, and I found it detracting in places, to the point where it lost my interest a few times.

I thought that this book could have been great. I learned during COVID that for various reasons, racialized communities fared far worse than non-racialized ones and I wanted to learn more about this for other epidemics/pandemics. But I found that there was not a lot of info on the actual bugs/diseases, for example, I learned more about Virginia Woolf than about influenza in the influenza chapter. I also disliked the writing style which I found overflowery to the point where having to parse sentences interfered with pacing. The only worthwhile chapter I read was about trypanosomiasis. I stopped reading after the chapter on HIV. Thank you to Netgalley and Atria/One Signal Publishers for the advance reader copy.

What a powerful book,!!! illness hav such a big impact on the world and its progress and its return to dark ages. A trend that has repeated throughout history.

This book didn’t really tell a history of plagues, rather essays about how plagues have affected specific populations were affected by each plague - what were the leaders of countries affected doing, what preventions and cures were found, and she finalizes with her own recommendations. I feel like this book was very political and was super opinionated rather than based on facts.

I was very excited to read this book. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations. Meandering and tangential, with many errors that I certainly hope will be corrected before publication. This book needs some thorough editing before being turned loose in the world. Reads like a grad school thesis.

This is a non fiction book like nothing other.

This is not a disease book, nor a scare book - this is a treatise that brings together, via the history of disease a true account of the racism and classism of the world and how the divisions that we are all aware of future exacerbate the death and destruction that follows.

Edna Bonhomme writes like a poet and she lightly includes personal stories, great literature and factual information as we tour the world history of disease. Hailing from Haiti, Bonhomme highlights Port-au-Prince but includes Africa, the United States and plenty of European History. She discusses Cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, Sleeping Sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19.

This is a call to justice, before the next plague #atria #ahistoryoftheworldinsixplagues #ednabonhomme

This was NOT the book that I was expecting to read.
I thought I would be reading about plagues and how to contain them.

This book is really not that much about the plagues.
The plagues mentioned are: sleeping sickness, the 1918 Flu, Ebola, AIDS, Covid, and cholera.

HOwever, the book delves into how people, mostly minorities are herded into a quarantine and left with little or no medical attention.

This book would be top notch if the author had stayed on the subject. However, she takes the reader into Virginia Woolf and her bed when she got the Spanish Flu. I don't think that this really fit into the narrative and I was lost when the author did a book review in the middle of the book.

I could see including the sleeping sickness, because it was the first time that the Germans used the Concentration Camp system. This fit into the authors narrative.
The same with Ebola. The Liberian residents herded into a quarantine zone was also very useful.

The other plagues? Not so much. AIDS was in prison, the ladies were confined, but were there NOT because of their illness. It was due to crime.

This book needs a heavy handed editor that will parse it down to making the argument for the author, that plagues are used to confine people.

Edna Bonhomme's History of the World in Six Plagues is an unusual book. It is clearly well researched and reflects serious study and thought. It will provide perspectives and information that virtually any reader is not familiar with - there is clearly something to be gained from reading this book. But it is neither "a history of the world" nor a book about these six plagues.

The book is not truly a history of the entire world. It focuses almost entirely on North America, Europe, and Africa. Bonhomme is still able to tell her story and make her point - but it is not really global in scope.

The book is also not really about the plagues that are discussed in the analysis. They do set a context for her analysis and underlie much of what she discusses. But if the reader really wants to learn about how COVID, AIDS, Spanish Flu, Cholera, etc. broke out, how they were treated, how they were eventually controlled (if, indeed, all of them ARE under control), etc., there are far better and more comprehensive books out there.

Rather, these plagues are used as a trigger point/context for discussing various groups that have been marginalized and ill-treated by society. And, indeed, this book is more about those groups than the plagues. That is a far more narrow niche than the book's title implies. But if one wants to better understand the treatment of slaves in America during cholera outbreaks of the 19th century or how colonialism impacted native tribes in colonial Africa during the outbreak of sleeping sickness in the 19th century, etc., this book does an excellent job. Virtually any reader - even one who is a true student of world history - will find ample new material and a perspective that has hardly ever been advanced on some of these groups.

In short, there is much to be gleaned in reading Bonhomme's book and it clearly has a place on the historians' bookshelf. Just understand what A History of the World in Six Plagues is truly about.

Edna Bonhomme wrote A History of the World Out of Six Plagues out of an embodied experience of an extended illness and being bedridden. The journey for her looks at the juxtaposition of race, class or poverty and the spread of disease. She deals with contagion on plantations, sleeping disease quarantines that heralded German concentration camps, flu outbreaks, Ebola, and HIV/AIDS as its contained in prisons with the bodies of women restricted and abused and the lack of care. This she does over the centuries and around the world.

Wham Bonhomme shows us is that how we face disease and how we choose to help or not help those impacted by disease is a reflection on our inhumanity that already lines the innards of culture. She covers a swath of those impacted by illness well beyond her and her time including the impact of illness on literature like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. As much as we try to contain disease it refuses to obey as do the people being studied by those.

The fight doctors had in Britain over trying to inform the public about influenza reminded of the most recent historical impact of covid and the hard push from societal forces who denied its existence, attacked those who would wear masks as bodies stacked up and took umbrage at their own vulnerabilities with fear masked as denial. It seems human beings never learn.

The cruelty with which German doctors like Robert Koch treated Africans as they studied sleeping sickness which came from tsetse flies boggles the mind. Racism is always present as those who are in decided seats of power experimented with poisons or medicines that they knew did more harm than good causing more pain, death and even blindness. But they were only Africans and it was for the good of white people or colonial Germany which is why the disease became of any note. When it was just Africans around Victoria Lake it was less an issue.

Bonhomme notes how contagion breaks up peoples sense of community especially during isolation or limiting their freedom. People will spread a disease rather than be hemmed up and suffering or do not have any symptoms. Disease reveals our need for one another as much as our stupidity and cruelty in looking of cures or just making people comfortable when there is no immediate cure. The common denominator through this book was the human need to deny our own vulnerabilities and need for one another across lines of race, gender, and class. A History of the World is a fascinating and engaging read that does not turn into an academic bore. It’s an instructive of what we don’t see to learn from which is the past. Bonhomme book is a light of hope to show us that we are and can be better than our history subject to the oppressions of race, class and gender.

I worked in the emergency room during the covid pandemic. I witnessed people suffer in their final hours. I couldn't imagine what the people in this book went through all those years ago. This book is well reported and tells us some hard truths that we needed to know. This book was great. I will be adding a physical copy to my library.

"A History of the World in Six Plagues" by Edna Bonhomme offers a fascinating and insightful examination of how pandemics have shaped human history. Bonhomme skillfully weaves together historical narratives and public health insights, highlighting the profound impact of plagues on societies across different eras. Her engaging prose and thorough research illuminate the interconnectedness of disease, politics, and culture. The book is both educational and compelling, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of how plagues have influenced the course of history and continue to shape our world today.