The Great Mortality
Chronicles the Great Plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the fourteenth century, documenting the experiences of people who lived during its height while describing the decline of moral boundaries that also marked the period.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2014–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Isn’t this already a well known thing? I first learned of it reading The Great Mortality by John Kelly maybe eighteen years ago. An excellent book by the way; funnier than you might expect a history of the Black Death to be.
- not OP but ...
John Kelly: The Great Mortality
An Intimate History of the Black Death
Robert S Gottfried: The Black Death - Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.: Cultures of Plague: Medical Thought At the End of the Renaissance
Philip Ziegler: The Black Death
Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron
there are some fictional works that I enjoyed such as Ken Follet World Without End (should be read after Pillars of the Earth IMO) and it's probably not enough on-topic for what you're asking.
- Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller. To be honest, I re-read it, but it had a much more significant impact the second time (I originally considered it to be weaker than "Black Spring" and "Tropic of Cancer", but this time round, due to certain personal circumstances, it resonated with me in a very powerful way – his ruminations concerning compassion, interacting with other people, the meaning and value of work and creativity). nfortunately, the only new book I read this year was "The Great Mortality", a pretty interesting but a tad too un-academic account of the Black Plague in Europe. Hopefully, I'll have a lot more time to read in 2015.
