Great book!!

Cantor pulled together many different writer's work on the subject of the 'Black Death' that even someone with no knowledge understands the times before and after the plaque events in Europe. If you have knowledge of this time frame and subject material - I still think you would learn something that you didn't know. In the back of the book he includes about 10 pages of reference material which is divided into subject matter.

This book is a keeper for my library of reference books.

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This is not a well-written, historically accurate, or interesting book about the plague. In fact, very little mention is made of the plague amid the author's ramblings. He goes on at length about the perception of the royalty then and throughout history until the 20th century. He has similar digressions on serfdom, property ownership, the persecution of Jews, and other seemingly random topics. The book is rife with historical inaccuracies and off-hand comments that reveal the author's biases. A much better book about the plague is John Kelly's The Great Mortality.

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Pretty fascinating account of how the plague spread and changed populations and economies the world over.

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This book is a sociological examination of the Black Plague's effect on medieval Europe. I read it because I am interested in the Plague, but it is barely mentioned. I learned a couple of new things in this book, but I found it rather dry and tedious. There is a lot of name-dropping of Kings, Princes, gentry, and courtiers and not remembering these individuals from history classes, I found it similarly hard to follow. This is a good read if you're into medieval Europe, but not so much for the plague.

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An interesting book about how the plague in medievel times changed the course of history forever.

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Excellent book, great information that wasen't dry, kept your interest while giving you great information. Book really shows the spread of the plague through the countries and how it was spread from person to person. Very interesting.

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As an entomologist, I use to write and lecture on how insects affected history. Mostly, this was due to insect-vectored diseases. Mosquitoes alone have vectored diseases which killed hundreds of millions of humans over thousands of years. And that subject still fascinates me.

Of course, insect also had an effect on history due to crop damage, damage to stored products, clothing, buildings, etc. In Florida alone, the cost of termite control and damage is over one billion dollars annually.

I bought this book to add to my collection of books on the Plague. One way bubonic plague is spread is by fleas. Unfortunately, I was disappointed as there was very little about the plague itself, and the book is mostly about life in Europe, with some mention of other areas, during the period 1100-1500 AD.

Let me also state that the book is not perfect. Just as an example, another reviewer here (Kari) mentions the book incorrectly states the rhyme song "Ring around the rosie" is often identified as arising from the Plague, but actually pre-dated it. I made this same mistake early on in my research and only corrected it after discussing it with a graduate student doing his thesis on medieval children's tales.

Yet in another way, the book has value, as it covered some aspects of life during that period I was unaware of. While I really didn't need to know all the people who traveled with Princess Joan of England, on her way to marry a prince of Spain---alas, she died from the Plague on the way---it was a somewhat interesting lead-in to the many political and economic marriages common during the period and how that affected the wealth of powerful families.

The book covers how rich many of the important nobility were, and why. I was astounded to learn that---based on today's value of the money back then---England alone had 13-15 families with over annual billion dollar incomes, which they mostly spent foolishly. Of course, this helped local economies and contributed to the rise of the "middle class," as well as offering vast employment in other areas.

Land controlled by the Church also made it wealthy. In fact, some monasteries had contracts with monks to provide large meals of excellent food and all the ale they could drink. If I lived back then, I too might consider a religious life. Of course, not all the monasteries had this wealth, but slightly over half did.

About the wealth now... Many of us read historic mysteries of that period and think everyone was poor. Yet, 20 English schillings is the equivalent of $1,000 dollars today, or in 2002 when the book was published. So, if John Crowner, the hero of Bernard Knight's "Crowner" series, can only be the coroner of his county if he has an annual income of ten English pounds per year, then that meant he had an income of over $10,000. When you consider his meals, including ale, at taverns often cost less than one penny, then you realize how much money he had.

The book mentions 85 English pounds back then was the equivalent of over $300,000 today. The book also explains how land was owned, divided, leased, who had rights to what, etc. This forms the basis of much of the motive for crime in the historical mysteries we read, and which those historical mysteries often don't adequately explain.

So, if you read Bernard Knight's books, or those of Ellis Peters ("Brother Cadfeal" series), Paul Doherty ("Athelstan" series"), or Fiona Buckley's ("Ursula Blanchard" series)---as well as many others---then this book might enlighten you to the what and the why of some of the intrigues.

While not in Large Print, the text on the 220 pages is much larger than usually found in historical mysteries, so it doesn't take long to read the book

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When a book about the plague of the 14th century begins with the claim the the "Ring around the rosie" rhyme is of medieval origin and refers to the plague, you know the author is very lazy in his scholarship. (The connection between the rhyme and the plague is generally believed to be mythical since the first written record of it is from the 18th century and the connection between the rhyme and the plague wasn't claimed until the 20th).

Unfortunately, errors and misinterpretations of facts seems to be Cantor's norm rather than the exception. Even when the facts are correct, the conclusions he draws from them are highly dubious. For example, an average life expectancy in the 40s did not mean that it was rare for someone to live past 50. It was quite common. The average life expectancy was so low because childhood mortality was high, not because individuals who survived to adulthood died relatively young.

He also has a tendency to go off onto peculiar tangents (connecting Thomas Aquinas with modern liberalism, for example) and inserting his rather eccentric perspective on current culture into his discussion of the medieval history that is supposed to be the topic of the book.

Oh, and the editing is bad. The same information is sometimes repeated on the same page or even, amazingly, the same sentence.

On the plus side, the book is short (only 220 pages) and easy to read. I finished it in a single day.

Read it if you wish, but don't take it too seriously.

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