In highly detailed and accessible accounts Sherman (The Scripps Research Institute) describes how porphyria and hemophilia figured so prominently in the royal families of Europe and led, respectively, to the madness of one king and the murder of another. He explains the biological and political roots of the Irish potato blight, the devastation wrought by cholera and smallpox in crowded cultures struggling to urbanize, the influenza that killed 22 million of the most healthy, the bubonic plague that killed 80 to 100 million but resulted in a seller's labor market, the tuberculosis and syphilis that felled great and low alike, and the scourges called malaria, yellow fever, and AIDS that also raised social awareness. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)