Plagues and Peoples is a book on epidemiological history by historian William H. McNeill published by Anchor Books in 1976.

It was a critical and popular success, offering a radical new interpretation of the extraordinary impact of infectious disease on cultures as a means of enemy attack.

The book ranges from examining the effects of smallpox in Mexico, the bubonic plague in China, to the typhoid epidemic in Europe.

[1] With the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, a new preface was added to the book.

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