Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"And in the dust be equal made", December 16, 2003
Ziegler's The Black Death was the only book I could find after a television documentary piqued my interest in the subject. I was worried the book would be too scholarly but, to my surprise, I found the writing style very pleasant and engaging. It is one of the best books I have read all year.Originally published in 1969, Ziegler gathered sources on the plague from the period to more recent examinations to try to create the most accurate picture possible of what it was like in Medieval Europe during 1348-1350 and the effects the Black Death had on Europe. Ziegler admits in his preface that he did not conduct any original research but he does critique the works of others, especially Thorold Rogers' theory that the Black Plague caused the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 (p. 188). He includes a chapter each on Italy, France, and Germany; the latter of which saw the emergence of the Flagellant movement and persecution of the Jews based on suspicions similar to those used in Nazi Germany. England is covered the most with 5 chapters and a 6th on Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Ziegler demonstrates the fear of the people right from the beginning when the plague entered Europe through Sicily. The patriarch of Catania wished to bring relics to nearby, plague-ridden Messina only to have the Catanians protest against the idea. In compromise, the patriarch dipped the relics in water and brought the water to the suffering neighbors (p. 28). Ziegler describes what Medieval life was like in sometimes witty style: "The medieval house might have been built to specifications approved by a rodent council" (p. 199). Period ideas on how to prevent infection are also interesting, including a elixir made of gold and quicksilver: "At least the high price of gold ensured that not many invalids could afford to be poisoned by such medicine" (p. 55). The chapter on the fictitious villages I also found to be very well-done and a nice change of pace from the somewhat statistically-driven prose. Two things I wish were in this book are a better map and more information on what the plague sufferer went through besides the obvious symptoms like boils. A map is included but it is inadequate as it does not list all (or even a small percentage of) the villages mentioned. Still, the book is well-written AND scholarly. Ziegler is very careful to qualify statements, avoid generalizations, and fairly critique all statistics given about the plague. My copy also has numerous illustrations and a color section on period plague-related art. It is made very evident the horror of the Black Death through such statements as: "Peterborough, another of those low-lying areas which were so remarkably well treated by the plague, [had a mortality] level notably below the average at a mere 27%" (p. 138).
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
solid academic analysis, February 27, 2000
The Black Death is a fairly academic book that seeks to give a comprehensive overview of the plague that ravaged Europe around 1348 (the book only briefly refers to other epedemics that also occurred during the rest of the 14th century). Zeigler points out in his 1997 preface (the book originally being written in 1969) that the book contains "virtually no original research." His goal was to organize, analyze, and present all the various research work, studies, and articles on the Black Death into one complete volume, since apparently there existed no such work at the time.For the general reader (meaning somebody who, like me, is not a historian or researching to Black Death; presumably such people already know of this book and would not be interested in my review of it), the book is a bit on the dry academic side, but it is still a quite enjoyable read. Zeigler starts with the origins of the disease, and traces it through Italy, France, Spain, England, and the rest of Europe. There is a heavy emphasis on England, which gets about as much space in the book as the rest of Europe combined, apparently because there is much more surviving evidence and information about the plague from England than anywhere else. The result is that the middle of the book seems to bog down in monotonous details about number of deaths in individual towns, counties, etc. that are probably of little interest to most readers. But there is much more to enjoy. In my case, I know little about the Middle Ages beyond what I learned in grade school; thus I greatly enjoyed the sections on things such as the state of medical knowledge, the Flagellants, the persecution of the Jews, hygeine conditions in London, and other asides that were relevant to the situation at hand. The last 50 or so pages are also quite interesting, in which Zeigler discusses debate among historians over such issues as the total population of Europe at the time, the death toll from the plague, and the social, economic, agriculture, artistic, and religious effects of the plague, especially in the 50 years afterwards. Again, for some readers, it may seem a dry listing of numbers and facts. But it also shows exactly how historians work to piece together a complete picture of history based on the limited evidence available, and how such evidence can be interpreted in different ways. Zeigler does not put forth any new theories himself, but is willing to give cite the ideas of opposed historians in an effort to show a balanced picture and possibly draw some conclusions from them. In some cases where it is simply impossible for us to truly ever know the real answer (such as exactly what portion of the population died in the plague) Zeigler is willing to hazard some guesses, but also to admit that we really don't know. There is one major flaw: a 30-page chapter in the book in which Zeigler invents a fictional historical village and narrates the arrival of the plague. In his preface, Zeigler says that he received a lot of criticism for this chapter from those who claimed it had no place in scholarly writing. Zeigler defends the chapter, saying that "statistics and facts alone, however striking, could noconvey the horror that afflicted Europe in the mid-fourteenth century." I agree with him on this point, and I thought the chapter was a good idea, until I actually read it. In my opinion, his fictional writing is so bland and devoid of emotion, that he failed in his attempt to give life to the horrors of the plague and their effect on the average man. Overall though, I definitely recommend this book to anybody with an interest in European history.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too popularized to be academic and too dry to be enjoyable, August 11, 2000
Ziegler's "The Black Death" is obviously intended to be a popularized account of the infamous bubonic plague that swept Europe in the late 1300s. Unfortunately, the book suffers from the worst of both worlds. It is too full of statistics and academic arguments to be an easily readable book, and yet has nothing new to offer that would make it interesting to the academic. There is nothing wrong with writing a book based only on previously published sources, but Ziegler does not do a good job of integrating these sources together. He discusses the relative merits of this method of computing the number of dead and that method of computing the number of dead; this discussion takes pages. One gets the feeling that a good editor was needed, to go through the book with a red pen and make Ziegler cut these pages of boring exposition down to mere paragraphs. Unfortunately, one also gets the feeling that these pages were left in because without them, the book would be exceedingly slender. A few other complaints: an entire chapter was devoted to a fictional village. Why? Ziegler writes that it is to provide a look at what an average village would suffer, but surely some village, somewhere in England, was thoroughly enough documented that Ziegler did not have to resort to fiction. (I would be much less disapproving if the writing in this chapter had been better.) The book is also overly concerned with documenting the progress of the plague: first it went here, where it killed X number of people, then it went here, where it killed Y number of people. As with the pages of tedious discussion about academic theories, this leaves one with the overall feeling that this book was written, not out of any abiding interest in the subject, but because he thought it would sell. Ziegler discusses (very briefly) medieval treatments of the plague, as well as its symptoms. What I was hoping for as I read that section was that Ziegler would then explain why those treatments did not work, and what the current treatment for bubonic plague is. Unfortunately, Ziegler didn't seem to have much interest in the plague as a disease: just on its progression through and impact on the middle ages. Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book," while fiction, is much more readable, and (to my admittedly inexpert eyes) just as well-researched as "The Black Death." Certainly I learned little new about the bubonic plague from "The Black Death" that I did not already know from reading other (nonfiction) books on the middle ages.
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