Customer Reviews

Thorough, but highly stuffy and dull.... - By: Iceni Peasant, 25 Jan 2005
I bought this book on the assumption that I would get a rounded view on the Black Deathin it's first movement across Europe. By rounded I mean, that there would be sections on the medical side of the plague, how it spread & where & excerpts from people that lived at the time, & then to finish off with how & why the plague kept coming back & then also how villages were affected afterwards....such as the fascinating stories there must be behind deserted villages & areas of churchyards notin use etc...

Well the book starts offin a great way, & is very clear & thorough on how the plague was transmitted & spread, & all information on the types of plague & how each countryin Europe was affected. Fine....that was good. Then it moved on to how long the incubation period was & where the plague started.....and it was after this point the book became a complete bore!

The authorin being "thorough" completely loses the interest of the reader by repeating & REPEATING their theory on incubation times & cross referencing & RE-cross referencing chronicles & arguing over exact dates....which quite frankly makes no difference if it was the 8th of May when the plague entered Britain or the 10th! AND that is literally the margins of error the author is arguing their case on most of the time.

The book goes from being interesting to being a total switch-off. If you're a university professor & workin this field, this book is for you....maybe....if you want to spend page after page reading repeated theories & page upon page of emotionless facts & figures that do not really emphasize or empathize with the period of historyin question. The author doesn't seem to write anything unless it is completely black & white of being correct....which is fine when you are proving a point, butin not presenting some of the grey areas you lose a certain character to the period you are writing about.

I am very experienced with academic works & history books, but this book was horrendous to wade through. Even though it has lots of facts & figures I do not even think a statistician would find the book of value.

My final warning.....only buy if you really need to know every single daily progress of the plague across Europe....or you have insomnia!