Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy

 

"As Philip Ziegler wryly notes, "it is a curious and somewhat humiliating reflection on human nature that the European, overwhelmed by what was probably the greatest natural calamity ever to strike his [sic] continent, reacted by seeking to rival the cruelty of nature in the hideousness of his own, man-made atrocities.'"