Book Review: The Black Death by Thomas Asbridge

Thomas Asbridge's The Black Death, an account of the plague which spread across the known mediaeval world and probably well beyond it in a series of pulses from the mid fourteenth century onwards is, quite simply, the most informative, accessible and comprehensive history book I think I have ever read. It's by no means the first book about this apocalyptic event that I've read, though it is the first since our current century's own experience of a much lower level pandemic. 

At 560 pages it's a chunky offering, to say the least, but every one of those pages is packed with information and insight. The book is split into three sections. The first, which reads like a thriller, covers the progress of the disease from its first appearance in the shores of the Black Sea as it spread through an initially unaware and later terrified western hemisphere. The second considers how the world responded to this unprecedented disaster: how cities dealt with the loss of trade and the collapse of their economies, how they tackled the problems of feeding the living and burying the dead. The third looks at how the mystery of the plague's origins and nature was unravelled and the impacts it had upon the world not just in the immediate aftermath but for centuries to come.  

I was utterly enthralled by it, largely because Asbridge quotes extensively from contemporary accounts and the words of those who suffered -- their pain, their bewilderment, their sense of utter terror -- prove both poignant and (I felt a little guilty about this) compelling. Some stayed, some fled. Some accepted it as their punishment from God, some railed against religion. And many of them -- possibly half the population -- did not survive. 

In my experience it's rare that a historian takes in such a well-known topic and covers it with such a fresh eye. I admired this book for many things, including its comprehensive coverage of a huge topic and the quality of its writing, but most of all I commend the author for making such a complex event so easily understandable. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and learned a vast amount from it.