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

I pitched this book after seeing positive reviews and being interested in the topic and the fact that it was non-fidtion.the first 60 or so pages were amazing and full of detail. Being a nurse I appreciate the information on transmission and disease process. I am now 27% completed with this book and bored to tears. The author is very redundant,which in his defense writing of a plagues march across Europe will have a lot of reoccurring events. I just feel like I am reading the same 10 paragraphs just change the country we are in and maybe and in a record of someone’s personal diary. I have never not finished a book but I do not know if I can keep reading the same thing over and over. The reason I wrote this review is for other people like me that may not be able to stick with redundancy and save them $11.

John Kelly’s, The Great Mortality, is a well written piece of history about a period we’ve all heard about (the black death), but to which we don’t give much thought. He begins by setting the stage for the mortality, which is what the contemporaries called it, by discussing where the plague may have come from, how it moved into Europe, and the various types of rats, and people, that may or may not have moved the infected fleas from place to place. He also reviews the various symptoms described by those who wrote about the plague, and what type, or types of plague, may have been involved. He also discusses the context within which the plague may have spread; poor medieval sanitary conditions, very bad weather, poor crops, starvation, other diseases weakening the population, and natural disasters that could have forced the migration of rats. All-in-all, like so many other things, there’s rarely a single factor that causes great events, but a variety of interrelated reasons. Kelly discusses them all. The methodology he uses in the book is to track the plague as it entered and traveled around Europe. He does this by looking at various towns, in order. He reviews how the people lived, sanitary conditions, how they were treated, who was affected (everyone), and mortality rates. He also discusses the symptoms and the rate at which the plague spread. Kelly spends the last portion of the book discussing some of the medical controversy about the plagues; the type (it may have been several), the various plague outbreaks after the mortality, or alternative causes for the deaths. If you’re looking for just one book to provide a very readable book about the black death, this is the one you’ll want to read.

Whoa. If you have any interest in the Black Death and the Middle Ages in Europe, and you can appreciate the scholarship that went into this book, then order it right this minute! What a great and terrible history. The author takes us all over the place: What was the Plague like in Constantinople? France? Great Britain? Now, you’ll know. My niece and sister and I went to England and France this summer and every night, one of us would read aloud, chapter after chapter. The trip was so much more interesting as a result. There we were in Avignon, where the pope in residence stumbled through the plague years, living it up while the streets were piling up with bodies. What a wonderful book. How interestingly the author presented the rundown of those years and how all that (long-ago, thank God) carnage resulted in the flowering of the Renaissance. There is so much more going on but you get the picture. Read the part about what happened when Becketf’s body was investigated. It’ll creep you out and keep the pages turning. I can’t imagine the years of investigating and study that went into the lucid writing of this book but I am so grateful to the author.

The best book I have read on the Black Death so far. I have read a few. It started sooner and finished later, gathering in distant threads and weaving them in to the story. Even some I had thought of but had dismissed, he briefly discussed – the plagues repercussions being a ( but not the) precursor to the Reformation. This is, of course, way too simplistic a theory, but it is nice to know others think along the same lines. I would definitely recommend this book if you want a concise history of the Great Plague of 1348. It would then be an excellent starting point for further exploration into more Plague History, the guideposts are all here. I just wish more of my resources had been like this at Uni.

I enjoyed the book immensely, but sometimes it felt like things went a bit off track. While the introduction of the plague and its causes was fantastic, the sections about the plague felt sparse at times. Usually, most of the chapter would focus on introducing the city or area and less time on the plague itself, which was frustrating. For example, the section on anti-semitism was long, with lots of background and only partially focused on the plague, which was interesting but I would become a bit of a slog while waiting for information related directly to the plague. I don’t know if there just is not a lot of research to pull from or if the author was more interested in the science and less in the history. Overall, an interesting read considering the times.

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