The Great MortalityThe Great Mortality
Chronicles the Great Plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century, documenting the experiences of people who lived during its height while describing the decline of moral boundaries that also marked the period.
It was probably caused by Y. pestis on fleas feasting on R. rattus and then on H. sapiens. It destroyed all life in some places, for it killed all the domestic animals as well as the human residents. It also probably saved Europe from a marginal existence by creating a free market economy. Kelly describes how the Black Death killed about a third of the population of Europe, how individuals attempted to out-run or out-think it, how the Church coped as those it dedicated to caring for the victims died beside them, and how the reduction in the population increased the value of labor and thereby improved the economic lot of the survivors. He also describes how plague deniers are coming up with new ideas about likely diseases, and how modern epidemics relate to conditions that led to the Black Death. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history, even more so now, when the notion of plague&;be it animal or human&;has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern
The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story: how many people died; how farm output and trade declined. But statistics can&;t convey what it was like to sit in Siena or Avignon and hear that a thousand people a day are dying two towns away. Or to have to chose between your own life and your duty to a mortally ill child or spouse. Or to live in a society where the bonds of blood and sentiment and law have lost all meaning, where anyone can murder or rape or plunder anyone else without fear of consequence.
In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people&;one third of the known population&;before it vanished.
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- New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c2005.
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