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The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (P.S.)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.5732
EAN: 9780060006938
ISBN: 0060006935
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: February 01, 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: January 31, 2006
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial 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
La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Great Mortality...the plague of 1348
I started reading a book called the Black Death, which is so ponderous and boring, one would have to be a medieval monk to follow it. Then I found the Great Mortality, and it is so well written and organized, that I had no problem following the path of the bubonic plague that bedeviled Europe and Asia in the 1300s. One can't help wishing you could go back in time and tell everyone to kill rats, clean up the garbage and offal, and bathe once in a while. It was not an enlightened age.
Rating:  - Vivid, Brilliant, Alive
The most extraordinary thing about John Kelly's book, The Great Mortality; an Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Times is how a book centered about Death can be so alive and vital. The multitude of compulsively readable, brilliantly written vignettes draw us into the lives of the people and we mourn their loss as we mourn those of people we know...my heart clenched when I read the concluding sentence of Agnolo of Turin's diary for 1348: "And I, Agnolo di Tura, ... Read More
Rating: - Illuminating
This was a very informative read. I didn't realize the plague started in China and that it moved across Eurasia via what Kelly calls a burst of medieval globalization. I also did not know that the Black Death might not have been caused by the plague. I was interested to know that there is some scientific evidence that in fact the plague and Black Death may have had different sources. So many of the things we take as fact are conjecture...I like getting new opinions. Bubonic plague was only identified ... Read More
Rating:  - Not worth the time or money
Analysis:
The description on the front cover reads "An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time." This is about as misleading as anything can get.
After chapter 2, the plague was being used as a back drop instead of the major topic of the book. Several paragraphs are devoted to character development, interaction between characters, and the plague is just there. The plague is here, there and everywhere - but the course of the book gets off tracks with ... Read More
Rating: - This book should be on every college syllabus in North America and Europe
I just read The Great Mortality and its evocative portrait of the ravaging plague kept me up all night. Parts were very moving, parts very educational -- and a few parts were actually amusing, though I wouldn't have expected it. The people of the early Middle Ages come alive, as does the frightening virus, which has all too many implications for today's world. I think it should be on the syllabus of every college in North America and Europe where they teach medieval history.
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