The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

The book made me realize the history is not just a series of events that happened in the past, but historical data and records of humans of those days. From this book, I learned how savage humans were, as well as the Plague itself. This book talks about the plague vector - largely accepted and also different views, how medieval people reacted toward the Plague, and post-plague effects to the society and economics in medieval age. The book is good, yet why the author spells a tarbagan tarabagan? The real name of this rat is TARBAGAN not TARABAGAN. Medieval age was not so advanced in science as it is in the 21st Century, so the ways they reacted to the disease and thought the cause of the disease were not scientific, but superstitious and unreasonable - astrologically ill alignment, punishment by God, bad air, and well-poisoning by Jews/Lepers/Muslims, etc. Author talks about Flagellants. This reminded me of the Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, when Caesar asked Antony to whip to get his wife's sterile curse off. Anyway, I enjoyed reading. A nice book!

I love to read nonfiction; popular history and science books tend to be my favorite genres. I don’t need to be spoon-fed the material, but I enjoy books that are more for the average person and are not overly technical or for scholars only. Not being an expert on infectious disease or Middle Age history, I can only comment on a book like this from the perspective of a general reader. And I can say that as soon as I picked up this book I was riveted and drawn into the story. I knew vaguely of the medieval plague but high school was a distant memory. The Great Mortality provided a well-paced chronicle of the course, spread and consequences of the disease as it ravaged Europe. Also, there seemed to be a fair amount of detail from primary / contemporary sources cited to shed light on what daily life was like at the time; how it impacted families, villages, cities and kingdoms. Despite dealing with one of the most horrific events in human history, there was actually enough humanity and even, at times, dry wit to make this (dare I say) a pleasant read. In short, I found this to be a very approachable, easy to read overview of the Black Death. I highly recommend this book.

The Great Mortality is a quick, engaging read; a narrative of the plague that struck Europe in the 1340s. It provides a story-teller's version of the origins of the disease in rodent populations in Central Asia, its trajectory to Europe, from the Black Sea into Italy, and then provides narrative snapshots of several regions - Italy, France, England - explaining how the plague impacted each society in turn. Its style is docudrama, with stories of people from nobility to commoner weaved together to build an overall picture of the devastating effects of the plague on people, society and history. The book is interesting and informative and worth a read, however it does have some defects. The first and worst is the repeated references to Norman Cantor's book "in the Wake of the Plague". Surely Kelly, who has done tremendous research, knows that Cantor's book is completely discredited and largely falsified. It undermines Kelly's own work that rather than expose Cantor's flaws, he cites them as though they are trustworthy. A minor quibble is Kelly's calling it the "Norwegian rat", when it is the Norway rat. The other regrettable aspect is the tone -- Kelly makes a meal out of personifying the plague, telling us that it is sometimes exhausted or eager or camps out or slithers into a new town. Its a useful effect when used once or twice, but the author's insistence on this effect becomes increasingly cringy as the book goes on. Perhaps a good editor can clean that up in future editions. Overall this is a good book, quick and informative and mercifully free of self-referential academic fetishes. The narrator is excellent, expressive and careful. Worth a listen.

Good book!

In the classic 1964 movie "Failsafe" Walter Matthau, playing a Kissingeresque civilian advisor to the Pentagon, makes an argument for the survivability of nuclear holocaust. He observed chillingly that nuclear aftermath would be similar to medieval times, when plagues wiped out entire populations. It is not comforting to read that in real life, the US Atomic Energy Commission to this day uses the Great Plague of 1347-52 as the best predictor of the aftermath of nuclear war.[11] John Kelly gives us a look into the causes, the experiences, and the effects of an epidemic that literally destroyed half the known world, the so-called Black Death. In a story that lends itself naturally to superlatives, Kelly's chronicle begins in a sanguine fashion with an explanation of the evolution of the bacillus "Y Pestis." Y Pestis was no stranger to man before 1347; the organism was probably responsible for a notorious plague during the reign of Justinian. One of the disturbing features of viruses, one that is now becoming more acutely implanted in the contemporary human consciousness, is the ability to mutate or adapt. The great concern over Avian flu is that precisely such an adaptation may be occurring as of this writing. Y Pestis made one its routine mutations in the fourteenth century, in the flatlands between Russia and China. Initially this was a problem only for the local field rat population. Kelly observes, though, that any kind of natural phenomenon--earthquake, drought, flood--often spelled trouble for humans, as rats were displaced from normal burrow habitats and moved closer to human settlements and villages, carrying their diseases du jour. Unfortunately, the timeless rat and the inventive Y Pestis found themselves in a revolutionary new epoch, the zenith of the Middle Ages. The barren Asian prairies were now crisscrossed by trade routes heading in both directions. As Europe evolved into a continent of commercially driven cities, and as feudal isolation gave way to urban congestion, the demand for markets and goods by land and sea made a global pandemic possible for the first time. By 1347 a Tartar army laid siege to the city of Caffa on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Kelly favors the theory that the Tartars brought Y Pestis with rats in their train. In any event, the siege petered out when both forces succumbed to the disease and Caffa would become an historical marker for the disease's entry into Europe. From Caffa the disease was communicated quickly by seafarers, first infecting Constantinople and then in rapid progression the major ports of the Mediterranean, from whence it progressed along rivers and highways alike. Eyewitnesses reported that contagion seemed to occur with incredible speed; just the slightest conversation with infected sailors seemed to transmit the illness. The actual manner of transmission, by fleas or by airborne bacilli, appears to be somewhat in dispute to this day. The speed of contagion, and the attendant morbid symptoms, produced near panic conditions. The term "bubonic plague" is derived from an outbreak of egg-sized growths or "buboes" on the human torso, particularly in the area of the groin and armpit. The bubo was only the worst of a series of catastrophic symptoms, about as severe and unusual as the human imagination wants to go. Kelly discusses in considerable detail why medieval Europe was ripe for such a catastrophe. Generally speaking, the prosperity of the Middle Ages had crested about a century earlier, c. 1250. The next century would see a general decline in farm productivity due to constant warfare, weather, and a demographic shift to cities. In fact, much of Europe was emerging from drought and food shortages, conditions that generally weakened human resistance and brought vermin closer to urban centers, as the disease arrived. Interestingly, Kelly suggests that without the Great Plague, Europe would have faced what he called "a Malthusian deadlock." [293] The tremendous population growth of the previous century had placed insurmountable strain upon the economic substructure. The post-plague Europe would prove to be a revitalized Europe. This was small comfort for those who lived through this nightmare. Kelly depends upon two invaluable sources: chroniclers and vital statistics. Chroniclers were not always accurate, and their death estimates sometimes exceeded the actual population of the cities reported. What they did report with great accuracy was the temper of the times, which ranged from pure panic to bacchanalian resignation. The Black Death brought out the best and the worst in every stratum of life: parents who abandoned children, parents who died for the children. Priests who tended the dying and dead; priests who fled to the mountains. One group of officials who remained remarkably persistent were notaries. Kelly draws heavily from their record keeping, which appears constant throughout the crisis. Notaries drew wills, settled accounts, recorded burials, and generally gave historians something of a barometer for actual population decreases. Kelly estimates a death rate of about 50% for nearly every segment of Europe; only Ireland's percentage appeared somewhat lower. By 1352 the plague, having arrived in Moscow, finally abated, having completed the hangman's noose around Europe. Kelly provides what might be called a medical Monday morning summary of events, reviewing the scientific literature from medieval times to the present day as to the precise nature of this event. Biological terrorism and recent virus mutations make this a valuable discussion. If there are any deficiencies in this work, it may be the absence of reflection upon the meaning of so terrible a disaster, in the way we reflect upon the meaning of the Holocaust. Sadly, the Black Plague unleashed unprecedented waves of anti-Semitism. Perhaps such searchings for meaning escape words. Look at the grotesque cover of this work [which I tried to discretely obscure from airport security personnel for fear I would be labeled a dangerous fellow.] I have no idea what it means, but it scares the hell out of me.

The Great Mortality is a good book for the general reader who wants to know more about the Black Death of the late 1340s, and that is both good and bad. It provides a broad overview from many parts of Europe and some parts of the East, but then there are enormous gaps in the story. What happened in India? Japan? Most of Africa? What were the Black Death effects on Malta, which would have a major plague epidemic in the 1600s? (That omission seemed particularly odd, as a comparison of the two outbreaks on Malta could provide interesting contrasts and comparisons.) Many aspects of the 1340s plague descriptions are compared to the known symptoms from more recent outbreaks of bubonic plague, but again there are puzzling omissions, which - how could you not want to find the answer?? Medieval historians sometimes mentioned that the plague buboes made noise! I mean - how? What kind? Have the buboes of modern victims made noise? Not a word about that. As the New Yorker used to say, "Our forgetful authors". The author kindly throws in some light-hearted comments amidst all the "death and death and death", and that is sometimes a relief; but sadly, the most amusing moment in the book (I have the trade paperback edition) arrives on page 12, where an editing or proofing error results in these sentences: "Plague is a disease of rodents. People are simply collateral damage, wastage in a titanic global struggle between the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis and the world's rodent population. Y. pestis's natural prey are turbots, marmots, rats, squirrels, gerbils, prairie dogs, and roughly two hundred other rodent species." Well. I have heard of all the animals mentioned, and they are all, except one, indeed, rodents. But that one - the first mentioned - is not a rodent nor even a mammal. I double-checked!!! Turbots are FISH. Then I found myself trying to conceptualize Y pestis thriving underwater and somehow, without benefit of fleas (unless the fleas were equipped with tiny SCUBA gear, which they jettisoned upon the fish being hauled in by human fishermen), transmitting themselves into the human bloodstream. Maybe if this happened in Japan and the human ate sushi? Why are such egregious errors permitted? Where do they even come from? The closest I could imagine was an unnoticed spell-check error, where the word "tarabagan" (a type of marmot found in Siberia, Mongolia and Northwestern China) was changed to the much more common "turbot". The only rodent I could find with a name beginning with "tu" is the tuco-tuco of South America, which is EXTREMELY unlikely to have had any relevance to the Black Death - since it is a New World rodent! Sorry, but finding this whopping error in a "scientific" book makes me wonder about all the "facts" presented about subjects of which I know nothing. The ones I wouldn't even know enough to question. It's a slippery slope when such errors are allowed to stand. Even though that one was funny!

Kelly, John, The Great Mortality. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. This book bears an unnecessarily inflammatory subtitle: "An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time." It turns out to be solid scholarship, however, with a predictable but fascinating plot: the march of the plague bacillus, y. pestis, throughout Europe beginning in 1348, carried by the familiar black rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis. This insect can survive up to six weeks without a host, but when desperate for blood to drink, can swarm--researchers counted up to 900 infected fleas on one unfortunate ground squirrel in Colorado. When its rat host dies in great numbers, the fleas switch over to humans. The Great Plague apparently was triggered by several years of horrible crop failures, known as The Great Famine, which weakened human immune systems, and by earthquakes and other natural events that caused the rats to panic and flee from their Mongol origins into settled communities. Transportation was by boat, horse, camel, or infected cloth. Given the miserable sanitary conditions of Medieval people, the death rate is estimated as high as 60-70% in some areas. One of the victims was Princess Joan, the 15-year old daughter of the King of England, who died during her pre-wedding trip. The book gives detailed descriptions of the pandemic and the efforts to avoid its effects, not excluding numerous murderous attacks on Jews (whole communities were herded into a single building and burned alive) even though Jews were dying along with all the rest of the victims. The anti-Semitism of all European countries is the virulence that, were it possible, exceeded that of the plague itself, and it has never been put to rest. The depopulation of Europe, its subsequent economic transformation and loss of authority of the Church, are covered as well as the movement of the disease itself. The horrible events of the 14th century, when the Hundred Years War began, were brilliantly set out in Barbara Tuchman's famous book, A Distant Mirror (1979), which is worth a revisit. Kelly does a thorough job of explaining the workings and tragic results of the Black Death, including the mention of a form I hadn't been aware of: septicemic plague, which traveled from the lymph nodes to the blood stream, killing its victims within 12 hours from onset. Kelly's book well deserves the five stars I've given it.

John Kelly has written a very complete text on the possible origin and the geographical course the Black Plague took as it swept through Europe in the Middle Ages. While covering the plague in detail, Kelly's book contains much, much more information than the romping of the 'Yersinia Pestis' bacillus. Kelly includes lessons in history, and a map to study both possible and probable courses the plague took on its journey. I found the map quite helpful, and the book interesting enough that I've been brushed up on my geography now as well. Kelly includes tales of kings, monks, priests, surgeons, the wide-spread Anti-Semitism movement, and the Great Famine of 1315. Despite a rich prose, well written in layman's language, the book remains dry at times. The flow of the timeline is interrupted a lot because Kelly tends to tell the tale by region rather than timeline, though the two eventually do meet and shake hands. Chapter Ten, "God's First Love" took a left turn and went off on its own into the history of Jewish persecution rather than the plague travels, not necessarily boring but enough off topic to make me lose interest. While Jews seemed to be unduly persecuted in plague times, I question the dedication of an entire chapter to Jewish history in a book about Y.Pestis. The sheer volume of information in 'The Great Mortality' makes it one of the most informative books I've read on the Middle Ages, much less plague bacillus, but it also creates a more difficult read. This might not be the book you are looking for if you wish to skim the surface of the Black Plague's history. 'The Great Mortality' is more like diving into deep water than gleaning a field. Kelly's book is heavy with information, including footnotes, a full notes/bibliography section, and index. But, its also filled with enough imagination and intrigue to maintain a high level of interest in the subject, even for laymen. If you have any interest in the plague or even the functioning of the Middle Ages during adverse conditions such as famine or plague, then definitely pick up a copy of 'The Great Mortality'. Enjoy!

If you have any interest in history, read this. This work deals mostly with the outbreak of the Black Death between 1347 to 1352. Jammed to the rafters with interesting facts, first hand accounts, heart wrenching stories of loss and grief and insights into the human psyche. First rate, highly recommend.

Chegou rápido, embora a previsão da Amazon é meio pessimista e te deixa desanimado. Já estou acabando a leitura, e é perfeita.

The cover was ripped and scratched.

This book is in v old style of writing. to flowery words which was not needed. It can be straight forward.

What is special about this work is how the author goes beyond just the grim details of the plague and illustrates the world of the times from one end of the known world to the other.