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Title details for The Great Mortality by John Kelly - Available

The Great Mortality

An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

by John Kelly
Matthew Lloyd Davies
Audiobook
2 of 3 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
2 of 3 copies available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 14, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781977391353
      • File size: 372245 KB
      • Duration: 12:55:30

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      John Kelly's richly detailed history of the medieval Black Death was published in 2005 but comes into its own as an audiobook in the age of COVID-19. Critics and readers have criticized Kelly for personifying the plague as a sensate being racing hungrily from town to town and country to country. But with polished elegance, narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies captures the grim ironies and mordant humor that underlie Kelly's account. Much in the spirit of Poe's horror stories and Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale," this lively narrative balances solid historical research with a penetrating analysis of the human response to disaster, It's a timely window into the distant past, and into our own troubled present. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 17, 2005
      The Black Death raced across Europe from the 1340s to the early 1350s, killing a third of the population. Drawing on recent research as well as firsthand accounts, veteran author Kelly (Three on the Edge,
      etc.) describes how infected rats, brought by Genoese trading ships returning from the East and docked in Sicily, carried fleas that spread the disease when they bit humans. Two types of plague seem to have predominated: bubonic plague, characterized by swollen lymph nodes and the bubo, a type of boil; and pneumonic plague, characterized by lung infection and spitting blood. Those stricken with plague died quickly. Survivors often attempted to flee, but the plague was so widespread that there was virtually no escape from infection. Kelly recounts the varied reactions to the plague. The citizens of Venice, for example, forged a civic response to the crisis, while Avignon fell apart. The author details the emergence of Flagellants, unruly gangs who believed the plague was a punishment from God and roamed the countryside flogging themselves as a penance. Rounding up and burning Jews, whom they blamed for the plague, the Flagellants also sparked widespread anti-Semitism. This is an excellent overview, accessible and engrossing. Agent, Ellen Levine.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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