In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made: Amazon.co.uk: Norman F. Cantor: Books

Review

Michael Prestwich

Professor of Medieval History, University of Durham, and author of "The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272-1377"

This is a splendid book. It is extremely lively and readable -- it gives a wonderful wide perspective of biomedical issues and history -- and also provides some fascinating detailed studies of the way in which the 1348 plague outbreak affected politics and society..."In the Wake of the Plague" is full of good things.

Product Description

Much of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren -- the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure -- are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths.

Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death afresh, as a gripping, intimate narrative.

"In the Wake of the Plague" presents a microcosmic view of the Plague in England (and on the continent), telling the stories of the men and women of the fourteenth century, from peasant to priest, and from merchant to king. Cantor introduces a fascinating cast of characters. We meet, among others, fifteen-year-old Princess Joan of England, on her way to Spain to marry a Castilian prince; Thomas of Birmingham, abbot of Halesowen, responsible for his abbey as a CEO is for his business in a desperate time; and the once-prominent landowner John le Strange, who sees the Black Death tear away his family's lands and then its very name as it washes, unchecked, over Europe in wave after wave.

Cantor argues that despite the devastation that made the Plague so terrifying, the disease that killed more than 40 percent of Europe's population had some beneficial results. The often literal demise of the old order meant that new, more scientific thinking increasingly prevailed where church dogma had once reigned supreme. In effect, the Black Deathheralded an intellectual revolution. There was also an explosion of art: tapestries became popular as window protection against the supposedly airborne virus, and a great number of painters responded to the Plague. Finally, the Black Death marked an economic sea change: the onset of what Cantor refers to as turbocapitalism; the peasants who survived the Plague thrived, creating Europe's first class of independent farmers.

Here are those stories and others, in a tale of triumph coming out of the darkest horror, wrapped up in a scientific mystery that persists, in part, to this day. Cantor's portrait of the Black Death's world is pro-vocative and captivating. Not since Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" have medieval men and women been brought so vividly to life. The greatest popularizer of the Middle Ages has written the period's most fascinating narrative.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

A truly awful book! 2 Jan 2005

By Me

Format:Paperback

As a keen amateur historian, I have encountered several dire books that have purported to relate historical events whilst displaying a stunning ignorance of known sources of information on the period concerned. However, none have been such a rich fount of unmitigated drivel as this book!

The text is dry and uninteresting, showing no passion for the subject matter whatsoever. The writing style of the author is banal to say the least, with the degree of repetition being truly astounding - surely even a retarded goldfish would succumb to boredom induced by encountering the same "fact" for the umpteenth time. Indeed, the intellectual level of the target audience is summed up by the reference to Henry II being a "young stud" (the fact that Henry had died in 1189 - over one hundred and fifty years before the onset of the Black Death - gives an insight into the pertinence of much of the text to the subject matter allegedly being dealt with).

However, the shortcomings of the prose are as nothing compared to the main problem with the book - that it is simply factually inaccurate in so many places! There are, regrettably, far, far too many errors to cite here - just one example occurring in the first few pages of the book is that the works of Thomas Hardy are transposed to Devon (providing not only a shock to the tourist industry of Dorset, but also another example of how relevant most of this tosh is). The author displays absolutely no grasp of British or European history whatsoever, being consistently inaccurate with his chronology of events and paying scant regard to the most basic historical fact.

I have never come so close to failing to finish reading a book because it was unbearably awful, but this one tested my resolve. I would certainly challenge it's classification as a "history" title - bad fiction would be more suitable. In summary - PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS RUBBISH!

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

avoid like the plague 12 Jan 2008

By mark hartley

This is not a good book. Firstly an awful lot of of it is not about the plague but a general rambling random history of Britain.

Secondly it's very repetitive and continual makes the same points overe again.

Thirdly the author appears to try to popularise the subject through such obscure references to comparisons to HIV and suggestions that the plague came from outer space.

One to avoid.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

LightweightI 16 May 2006

By Patron

I was very disappointed with this book. I found it neither scholarly nor populist. It was light on facts, considering that it was written by a professor, as well as being understated. The thing that irritated me the most was that it was written with double spacing between the lines of text to give it the impression of being longer than it actually is! This is the second of Prof Cantor's books that I have read and it was exactly the same style and double spacing that this one was. He clearly knows his subject but the net result of his book is a feeling of being talked down to. Too lightweight for me. John Kelly's book is far better.