Black Death from bookish, a weblog by George Girton

Black Death . . . . . aug 4 2003 — bookish89.dat

On the way back to L.A. I made one of my favorite stops: the secure bookstore at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. One of the unintended consequences — one must think it has to be unintended — of heightened security at airports is there are now some bookstores in the world to which access is restricted to those who are not carrying weapons.

At least, they are not carrying weapons which can be detected by X-ray or metal detectors. And in that light, I highly recommend to you In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made [buy at amazon] . by Norman F. Cantor.

This insightful treatment of medieval life and death runs the gamut of biomedical, historical, and cultural sides of the plague, and is particularly strong in drawing connections between the effects of sudden and catastrophic decimation of the population and the foundation of legal practices that are still in effect today. The description of the type of person who was an aristocrat at the time of the plague was of some interest, inasmuch as the conditions of the time, i.e. astonishing wealth of a small part of the population, that existed at the time seem to have sprung into existence again today.

The writing in the book is clear, to the point, and engaging. Consider the following paragraph from the "Aftermath" chapter:

In the end what happened to the Plantagenets' Anglo-French empire was very similar to the fate of the Roman Empire. Both were brought low by a biomedical devastation that casued a shrap fall in the size of the working and military population. Both were grand edifices undone by the specter of infectious disease and pandemics. There is a lesson for the American emipire today in that situation.

A map, taken from Graham Twigg's book on The Black Death, shows the spread of the plague across Europe from the toe of Italy in December of 1347 to mid-Scandinavia in December of 1350.

A well-annotated critical bibliography makes In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made [buy at amazon] a very good jumping-off point for knowing more about the Black Death.

It was a great airplane read, and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to read other books by Norman Cantor — and there are many.

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