In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made [Hardcover]

Norman F. Cantor (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0684857359 | ISBN-13: 978-0684857350 | Publication Date: April 10, 2001 | Edition: 1

Much of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren -- the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure -- are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths.

Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death afresh, as a gripping, intimate narrative.

"In the Wake of the Plague" presents a microcosmic view of the Plague in England (and on the continent), telling the stories of the men and women of the fourteenth century, from peasant to priest, and from merchant to king. Cantor introduces a fascinating cast of characters. We meet, among others, fifteen-year-old Princess Joan of England, on her way to Spain to marry a Castilian prince; Thomas of Birmingham, abbot of Halesowen, responsible for his abbey as a CEO is for his business in a desperate time; and the once-prominent landowner John le Strange, who sees the Black Death tear away his family's lands and then its very name as it washes, unchecked, over Europe in wave after wave.

Cantor argues that despite the devastation that made the Plague so terrifying, the disease that killed more than 40 percent of Europe's population had some beneficial results. The often literal demise of the old order meant that new, more scientific thinking increasingly prevailed where church dogma had once reigned supreme. In effect, the Black Deathheralded an intellectual revolution. There was also an explosion of art: tapestries became popular as window protection against the supposedly airborne virus, and a great number of painters responded to the Plague. Finally, the Black Death marked an economic sea change: the onset of what Cantor refers to as turbocapitalism; the peasants who survived the Plague thrived, creating Europe's first class of independent farmers.

Here are those stories and others, in a tale of triumph coming out of the darkest horror, wrapped up in a scientific mystery that persists, in part, to this day. Cantor's portrait of the Black Death's world is pro-vocative and captivating. Not since Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" have medieval men and women been brought so vividly to life. The greatest popularizer of the Middle Ages has written the period's most fascinating narrative.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One-third of Western Europe's population died between 1348 and 1350, victims of the Black Death. Noted medievalist Norman Cantor tells the story of the pandemic and its widespread effects in In the Wake of the Plague.

After giving an overview, Cantor describes various theories about the medical crisis, from contemporary fears of a Jewish conspiracy to poison the water (and the resulting atrocities against European Jews) to a growing belief among modern historians that both bubonic plague and anthrax caused the spiraling death rates. Cantor also details ways in which the Black Death changed history, at both the personal level (family lines dying out) and the political (the Plantagenet kings may well have been able to hold onto France had their resources not been so diminished).

Cantor veers from topic to topic, from dynastic worries to the Dance of Death, and from peasants' rights to Perpendicular Gothic. This makes for amusing reading, though those seeking an orderly narrative may be frustrated. He also seems overly concerned with rumors of homosexual behavior, and his attempt to link the savage method of Edward II's murder to a cooling in global weather is a bit farfetched.

Cantor wears his considerable scholarship lightly, but includes a very useful critical biography for further reading. While not an entry-level text on the Black Death, In the Wake of the Plague will interest readers looking for a broader interpretation of its consequences. --Sunny Delaney

From Publishers Weekly

The author, currently an emeritus professor at New York University, has had a distinguished career as a medieval historian, and his textbook The Civilization of the Middle Ages has been popular with many students over many years. Here Cantor produces a popular account of one of the greatest disasters ever to befall the people of Europe. The great plague that struck in the mid-14th century, and returned intermittently for centuries thereafter, had a mortality rate of perhaps 40% and consequently ushered in several profound changes. Beginning with a biomedical survey of the disease, the author points out many problems with current beliefs about its origins, transmission and nature. He suggests that in many instances the likely cause of death was anthrax, which has the same initial symptoms as plague. The plague fell on all classes and regions, and the author uses the stories of several individuals to personalize the devastation and its consequences. He makes a particularly compelling case that the death of Thomas Bradwardine, newly consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, had deep repercussions for the development of both science and religion. In some instances the book raises points that deserve fuller treatment, such as the possible role of serpents in the transmission of plague, but the final chapter neatly summarizes the consequences of this calamity. This book will be welcomed by anyone who wants a good introduction to the topic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684857359
• ISBN-13: 978-0684857350
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (211 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #917,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, sloppy, and sensationalized, September 5, 2005

By 

Chris Laning (Davis, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (Paperback)

I have never understood why Norman Cantor seems to think the public only wants the "movie version" of history instead of the real thing. But the movie version -- including outdated ideas, sensational assertions and gross misunderstandings -- is what this is. After reading this book -- which, fortunately, I didn't pay full price for -- I am happy to see from the reviews posted here that others have spotted its many flaws.

Quite a few people who come to this book WITHOUT much background in medieval history or medicine find it fascinating, and feel they have learned a lot about history from it -- though admittedly it's also rambling, repetitious, VERY poorly edited and sometimes difficult to keep track of. (I'll second all those criticisms but won't address them here.)

On the other hand, people who actually KNOW something about biology, anthropology, genetics, epidemiology, demographics or material culture will be brought up short by Cantor's sloppy thinking and downright inexcusable ignorance.

One reviewer comments, "Cantor's research for this tome must have been incredibly extensive, since he provides excruciating details for every topic..." But in fact, it's those very fascinating details that are often wrong. Just about any time I found myself saying "Wow, I never knew THAT," it turned out later that Cantor was wrong. For instance, he clearly didn't even bother to verify his facts on the old "Ring Around the Rosy" legend -- check it out on the Urban Legends Reference Pages; the song seems to hve come into existence in the 1880s.

As for demographics, he confuses the statistics on life expectancy badly, saying that a modern actuary would have given the 15-year-old Princess Joan "just about ten years to live", based on an *average* life expectancy of 25. This is highly misleading, because the highest death rates were among children under 5 -- if you made it to age 20 (only about two-thirds of the children born actually did), you could expect to live at least into your 50s, even under the appalling sanitary conditions of the time. And Joan was a princess. relatively well cared for and well nourished, and might have lived even longer. King Edward I lived to be 68; Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) lived to be 82.

He also asserts that men might be on their third or fourth marriage by age 45, ignoring the fact that women of that age might almost equally well be on their third or fourth husband. The tendency for women to die in childbirth is nearly balanced by men's tendency to die in wars, brawls, or hunting accidents.

His carelessness about material culture is at least as great. He perpetuates the myth of the Great Unwashed by asserting that people didn't "bathe" -- they may well not have immersed themselves completely in water, but at least the upper and middle classes washed their bodies regularly (a sponge bath and a good rinse), changed their underwear frequently, and swept their floors daily. He regularly gets clothes wrong: women did not wear "corsets" in the 1300s, and also a velvet altar frontal is not a "vestment," nor would it be used ON the altar. (Vestments are clothing, cloths ON the altar are always linen.)

The real problem, though, is that Cantor apparently hasn't figured out how to write competently for a lay audience. He seems to think the public only wants the "movie version" of history. I've read several of his other books, and his textbooks -- where he's not trying to be breezy or topical, or to air his sometimes crochety opinions of modern life -- are fine. His _Medieval Lives_, on the other hand, is terrible: it's at least as sloppy and filled with errors as this is. The worst parts are where he's trying to be funny.

I read William Manchester's _A World Lit Only by Fire_ perhaps seven or eight years ago, when I knew less than I do now, and found I think nine errors of fact in its first dozen pages. And I don't have a PhD, just a good liberal arts college degree. In a morbid way, it's amusing to hear THAT book praised as better than this one. Perhaps that IS an accurate assessment.

100 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you liked A DISTANT MIRROR you can SKIP this book., April 13, 2001

By 

John McWhorter (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (Hardcover)

I have rarely read such a poorly edited book. The text is extremely repetitious. Points are strung across lengthy asides about people and their obscure lineages which make throughline often hard to follow. Large claims are constantly made about the impact of the plague that the text did not remotely back up.

In addition, there are frequent stray references to men being gay which are usually tangential to the argument, and even a section that verges perilously on blaming Jews for their own persecution which I found offensive despite 1) not being Jewish and 2) being extremely chary of the Political Correctness brigade.

The only really useful point is that anthrax was probably as important a factor as the bubonic one, but that point is made long before the halfway point. Beyond that, I learned nothing of value that was not in Barbara Tuchman's masterful A DISTANT MIRROR. With his imposing credentials, I am sure Cantor has done great work in the past, but this particular book is a major dud -- as much as I hate to say this about anything an author put work into, this book is, sadly, not worth the money.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the time nor the money, April 17, 2001

By 

James Rawson "Jamie Rawson" (Flower Mound, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (Hardcover)

This book reads more like a collection of randomly assembled notes than a historical treatise. The narrative wanders over more than a millennium and tries to embrace cultural, religious, and biomedical history within the space of 200 pages. It does not succeed in any aim. I was frankly astounded that the author, who enjoys a good reputation as a historian of the Medieval period, would put his name to such a poorly executed effort.

This was not worth the time nor the money.