The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devestating Plague of All Time by John Kelley

I have always been fascinated by outbreaks. My favorite book is The Stand. I love plague movies like Outbreak and 28 Days Later. After reading books by Anne Benson called The Plague Tales and The Burning Road, both very good books on their own, I decided I wanted to know more about the real history of the Black Death and y pestis.

In The Great Mortality, John Kelley traces the full history of the Black Death, from its origins in Mongolia through the trade routes of Europe. He talks about the variations the plague took, from bubonic plague that had the trademark bubo, bruise like splotches on the body, and bad odor, pneumonic plague that spreads directly from person to person though coughs, and includes coughing up blood and constant vomiting, and septicemic plague, that causes extremities to become black and hard as coal. He talks about what made the medieval world so easy for plague to spread and what helped stop it after thousands died. (Estimates say numbers of a third to 60 percent of the population.) Not only does John Kelley trace these facts, he includes stories of people who lived during the plague times, straight from their own journals and letters. He talks about people who stayed by friends and family to help them, and those who ran and hid. He talks about the Flagellants, who whipped themselves sin the name of God to “save” others from plague and he talks about the rampant anti-Semitism that ran through the world before and along with the plague.

Overall, the most interesting thing I found was how John Kelley traces how the culling of the population due to the first round of plague (and the two others that followed) helped usher in a new age of development. Suddenly, the laborers were in demand, food was plentiful, and the hierarchy of the serfs and nobles was breaking down. While the plague was devastating and destroyed thousands of lives and wiped whole families out, it ushered in a new hope for all those left behind.

It's an interesting look at a world forced into change and the nasty little bug that spured it on.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for making something that could have been terribly dry into something intriguing and informative