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

~ (Author) "THIS BOOK BEGAN AS AN INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE AND ENDED as an investigation of the past..." (more)
Key Phrases: marmot plague, pestis secunda, plague foci, Black Death, Middle Ages, Third Pandemic (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A book chronicling one of the worst human disasters in recorded history really has no business being entertaining. But John Kelly's The Great Mortality is a page-turner despite its grim subject matter and graphic detail. Credit Kelly's animated prose and uncanny ability to drop his reader smack in the middle of the 14th century, as a heretofore unknown menace stalks Eurasia from "from the China Sea to the sleepy fishing villages of coastal Portugal [producing] suffering and death on a scale that, even after two world wars and twenty-seven million AIDS deaths worldwide, remains astonishing." Take Kelly's vivid description of London in the fall of 1348: "A nighttime walk across Medieval London would probably take only twenty minutes or so, but traversing the daytime city was a different matter.... Imagine a shopping mall where everyone shouts, no one washes, front teeth are uncommon and the shopping music is provided by the slaughterhouse up the road." Yikes, and that's before just about everything with a pulse starts dying and piling up in the streets, reducing the population of Europe by anywhere from a third to 60 percent in a few short years. In addition to taking readers on a walking tour through plague-ravaged Europe, Kelly heaps on the ancillary information and every last bit of it is captivating. We get a thorough breakdown of the three types of plagues that prey on humans; a detailed account of how the plague traveled from nation to nation (initially by boat via flea-infested rats); how floods (and the appalling hygiene of medieval people) made Europe so susceptible to the disease; how the plague triggered a new social hierarchy favoring women and the proletariat but also sparked vicious anti-Semitism; and especially, how the plague forever changed the way people viewed the church. Engrossing, accessible, and brimming with first-hand accounts drawn from the Middle Ages, The Great Mortality illuminates and inspires. History just doesn't get better than that. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

The Black Death raced across Europe from the 1340s to the early 1350s, killing a third of the population. Drawing on recent research as well as firsthand accounts, veteran author Kelly (Three on the Edge, etc.) describes how infected rats, brought by Genoese trading ships returning from the East and docked in Sicily, carried fleas that spread the disease when they bit humans. Two types of plague seem to have predominated: bubonic plague, characterized by swollen lymph nodes and the bubo, a type of boil; and pneumonic plague, characterized by lung infection and spitting blood. Those stricken with plague died quickly. Survivors often attempted to flee, but the plague was so widespread that there was virtually no escape from infection. Kelly recounts the varied reactions to the plague. The citizens of Venice, for example, forged a civic response to the crisis, while Avignon fell apart. The author details the emergence of Flagellants, unruly gangs who believed the plague was a punishment from God and roamed the countryside flogging themselves as a penance. Rounding up and burning Jews, whom they blamed for the plague, the Flagellants also sparked widespread anti-Semitism. This is an excellent overview, accessible and engrossing.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060006927
• ISBN-13: 978-0060006921
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #410,047 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sprawling Circumstances of the Black Plague, April 19, 2005

By	Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In this book exploring the times and the details of the Black Plague, John Kelly introduces the lay reader to the pestilence that wiped out up to sixty percent of some of Europe's most bustling cities. From Messina to Florence to Paris to London - and all the cities and towns between and around them, the populace could not stop the spread of this particularly virulent form of Yersinia pestis, whether they sought laws to restrict it or simply chose to ignore it. The book provides insights into some of the potential causes of why this bout of plague is unequaled in history: sanitation, specific rodent populations (including that of the tarabagan of the Russian steppes), societal traditions, a burgeoning "global" economy, warfare, bacteriology, and other theories. The epidemiology of the disease and the forms it takes, from the "gurgling" bubos of bubonic plague to the respiratory infection that sounds frighteningly close to the hemorrhagic fevers, make for fascinating, if gruesome, reading.

The author recreates the events of individuals who succumbed to Y. pestis through written documentation and his own imagination. For an example, he writes "The headstone tells us only enough to suggest the following scenario . . . " He then continues for a page and a half to describe in detail the final days of a husband and wife. I found the method to make the plague more "intimate" through invented details somewhat troubling, although readers will find these passages the most compelling because of their focus on the individual. The book can occasionally be repetitive, stating in one chapter what was stated earlier. The strength of this historical account - and what readers will remember most about it - is the vivid depiction of medieval life as it circles around, and then centers on, the plague itself. The psychological damage beyond the physical loss is poignantly illustrated on almost every page.

The author outlines not only the complex forces at work during the plague, but also the far-reaching consequences of it, both in the changes it wrought more or less immediately in Europe and in our approach to disease today. Readers intrigued by the societal and environmental elements of a pandemic will find this history rich with detail and complexity.

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping And Ghastly Tale, February 24, 2005

By	Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

John Kelly has produced a nasty, fascinating tale with The Great Mortality, as he covers the history of the Black Death (ca. 1347-1352) tour of Europe. One should not make the mistake of reading this book over lunch as the descriptions are accurately nauseating in their thoroughness. At times, a hint of monotony does creep into the tale as each country's encounters with the swiftly spreading disease is told. The tale does not vary much and is most interesting in the earlier chapters with the diseases first encounters with Europe in Italy. The book's strengths are its discussion of recent scholarship on both the origin and the nature of the plague. It is a gripping story of a most horrific and unimaginable event.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An enthralling, compelling read!, February 2, 2005

By	R. Neyman "DrBob1111" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reading this book was like tumbling down a rabbit hole into the Middle Ages. It was enthralling, but also very precise and easy to follow in its explanation of exactly how a tiny rat flea came to cause such death and destruction all over Europe and Asia. The cities come alive, like they're characters in their
own right, and even though what is being described happened centuries ago, it felt like something like it could happen again. I read it in one sitting! FIVE
STARS