The Great Mortality: An In-Depth Exploration of the Black Death's Impact on History

RosaRosa: Payed extra for hard cover only for it to come already open and marked at the bottom with a black marked and a slice front cover not worth the 40 ish dollars. I would have bought used so at least I would have paid a fair price

Canada on Sep 22, 2023

Etza: While chronicling the causes of the Black Death and its major events, between the lines the reader can see how the plague dealt a mortal blow to the archaic customs of orthodoxy and prepared the way for important changes in the human world, namely the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and a transition to our modern world civilization.

United States on Sep 04, 2023

8102: A great book about the Plague that is an easy read and very interesting.

Canada on Aug 27, 2023

Geedes: Chegou rápido, embora a previsão da Amazon é meio pessimista e te deixa desanimado. Já estou acabando a leitura, e é perfeita.

Brazil on Jul 17, 2023

Autodidact: The Great Mortality is a good book for the general reader who wants to know more about the Black Death of the late 1340s, and that is both good and bad. It provides a broad overview from many parts of Europe and some parts of the East, but then there are enormous gaps in the story. What happened in India? Japan? Most of Africa? What were the Black Death effects on Malta, which would have a major plague epidemic in the 1600s? (That omission seemed particularly odd, as a comparison of the two outbreaks on Malta could provide interesting contrasts and comparisons.)
Many aspects of the 1340s plague descriptions are compared to the known symptoms from more recent outbreaks of bubonic plague, but again there are puzzling omissions, which - how could you not want to find the answer?? Medieval historians sometimes mentioned that the plague buboes made noise! I mean - how? What kind? Have the buboes of modern victims made noise? Not a word about that. As the New Yorker used to say, "Our forgetful authors".
The author kindly throws in some light-hearted comments amidst all the "death and death and death", and that is sometimes a relief; but sadly, the most amusing moment in the book...

United States on Jun 23, 2023

Partick Potter: A bit slow at first, but got there eventually. Plenty of good insight into how the disease spread across Europe and the devastation it caused.

United Kingdom on Aug 16, 2022

Bonny12: John Kelly has produced a great account of the first time the Black Death reached Europe in 1347, taking the reader through the historical events chronologically, starting in Caffa. This way he introduces main historical sources and the events behind them, and in his describing the people and locations on the way. From Sicily to Italian coastal towns, the Tuscan cities, France with Marsaile and it's papal court at Avignon, Switzerland & the Holy Roman Empire with it's associated anti-jewish pogroms, and the arrival of the plague in England and Ireland we follow in the footsteps of this neverbefore seen disease.
Kelly's account is accesible for the lay-reader, giving background and particularities in an engaging voice, as well as for the historian who wants to venture into a new field. He doesn't just describe the people and places, but also explains the historical debate about the origin of the disease, and explains the thoughts of the 'plague deniers', who believe the medieval plague of 1347 to have been a different disease then the later Black Death caused by Yrsinia Pestis.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in this subject matter.

United Kingdom on Jan 22, 2014

Thomas J. Burns: In the classic 1964 movie "Failsafe" Walter Matthau, playing a Kissingeresque civilian advisor to the Pentagon, makes an argument for the survivability of nuclear holocaust. He observed chillingly that nuclear aftermath would be similar to medieval times, when plagues wiped out entire populations. It is not comforting to read that in real life, the US Atomic Energy Commission to this day uses the Great Plague of 1347-52 as the best predictor of the aftermath of nuclear war.[11] John Kelly gives us a look into the causes, the experiences, and the effects of an epidemic that literally destroyed half the known world, the so-called Black Death.

In a story that lends itself naturally to superlatives, Kelly's chronicle begins in a sanguine fashion with an explanation of the evolution of the bacillus "Y Pestis." Y Pestis was no stranger to man before 1347; the organism was probably responsible for a notorious plague during the reign of Justinian. One of the disturbing features of viruses, one that is now becoming more acutely implanted in the contemporary human consciousness, is the ability to mutate or adapt. The great concern over Avian flu is that precisely such an adaptation...

United States on Dec 24, 2005