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Books Movies & Music Staff Recommend... Nonfiction In The Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made
Books Movies & Music Staff Recommend... Nonfiction In The Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made
26 Oct 2009 |
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 As we all hunker down to prepare for the flu season, here’s a glimpse into an epidemic that has no equivalent in our times. "To find a modern parallel we must look more toward a nuclear war than a pandemic." In the Wake of the Plague looks at the social realities of the Black Death, which erased 40% of the population in parts of 14th century Europe. It is an interesting and short read. But it’s not nearly as good as Norman Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages, or the earlier version of that book, Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization. Here is a 360-degree view of 1,000 years of European history. Cantor shows us that the Middle Ages were anything but backwards or barbaric. He portrays the regular men and women, the monks, warriors and peasants, and explains fully the forces that shaped Medieval society: the Barbarian invasions, the struggles for power between the pope and emperor, between kings and aristocrats, the influence of the Middle East, the intense religious fervor and the beginnings of the Renaissance. It could keep you occupied for many a long, winter night.
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