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Going viral

PATHOGENESIS: How Germs Made History, by Jonathan Kennedy (Torva, $40)

When Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prizewinning Guns, Germs, and Steel appeared in 1997, it changed the course of how history was written. It was no longer just the stage for kings and conquerors, or even social and economic advancement. Anthropology, evolutionary biology, genetics, linguistics and ecology also had a say.

Among Diamond’s insights into how changes in food production and the domestication of, the emphasis on wider considerations has increased.

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