The world’s unending war against disease is program topic Oct. 14
Smallpox, malaria, bubonic plague, polio, measles, and now, COVID-19 are counted among the devastating diseases that have taken their toll over the millennia.
The medical advances that ultimately helped to contain them will be the focus of a History Book Festival virtual program at 5 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 14, via Zoom.
Writer and researcher Charles Kenny will discuss his new book, “The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease.” A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.
“The Plague Cycle” recounts how, for 4,000 years, the size and vitality of cities, economies and empires were heavily determined by infection.
The cycles of plagues set the tempo of civilizational growth and decline, since the common response to the threat was exclusion – quarantining the sick or keeping them out. But advances in hygiene and medicine over the past 200 years have largely allowed humanity to free itself from the hold of epidemic cycles, resulting in an urbanized, globalized and unimaginably wealthy world.
Despite such progress, Kenny cautions that global trade, population fluctuations and climate change leave people more vulnerable than ever to newly emerging plagues. He argues for greater global cooperation toward sustainable health, as well as collaborative efforts such as those to develop and deploy a COVID-19 vaccine.
Harnessing history, economics and public health, Kenny charts humanity’s remarkable progress, and provides a fascinating and timely look at the cyclical nature of infectious disease.
Kenny is a writer-researcher at the Center for Global Development, where he has worked on policy reforms in global health, and on peacekeeping and anti-corruption campaigns led by the United Nations. Previously, he spent 15 years as an economist at the World Bank, traveling the planet from Baghdad and Kabul to Brasilia and Beijing.
Kenny earned a history degree at Cambridge University, and has graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, and the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.
His other books include “Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding,” “How We Can Improve the World Even More” and “The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest Is Great for the West.”
The Zoom-based program is free, but preregistration is required. To reserve a spot, go to historybookfestival.org.
Copies of “The Plague Cycle” are available at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, the official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Biblion in Lewes also has copies of the book for sale. Books purchased at either shop come with a signed archival bookplate.
Presenting sponsors of the 2021 festival are Delaware Humanities and the Lee Ann Wilkinson Group of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Gallo Realty.
In addition to the Lewes Public Library, the festival’s virtual programs are supported by the Delaware Division of Libraries and Sussex County Libraries. Now in its fifth year, the History Book Festival is the first and only book festival in the United States devoted exclusively to history.
