The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

by John Kelly Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies

Overview

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.”*-*Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of*The Making of the Atomic Bomb*

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history-even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern.

The plague that devastated Asia and Europe in the 14th century has been of never-ending interest to both scholarly and general readers. Many books on the plague rely on statistics to tell the story: how many people died; how farm output and trade declined. But statistics can't convey what it was like to sit in Siena or Avignon and hear that a thousand people a day are dying two towns away. Or to have to chose between your own life and your duty to a mortally ill child or spouse. Or to live in a society where the bonds of blood and sentiment and law have lost all meaning, where anyone can murder or rape or plunder anyone else without fear of consequence.

In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the journey of the plague as it traveled from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people-one third of the known population-before it vanished.

Editorial Reviews

Michiko Kakutani

This was Europe in the 1340's, the decade of the advent of the Black Death, and in his harrowing new book, The Great Mortality, John Kelly gives the reader a ferocious, pictorial account of the horrific ravages of that plague … this volume's chief interest lies in its overview and synthesis of more academic studies and Mr. Kelly's ability to turn his research into an emotionally accessible narrative, animated by wrenchingly vivid tableaus and alarming first-hand witness accounts - accounts that give the reader an intimate sense of day-to-day life in medieval Europe and the terrible ways in which the Black Death disrupted it.
— The New York Times

Jonathan Yardley

The Great Mortality is an admirable work of popular history, a genre too often derided by scholars. Kelly summarizes and interprets previous scholarship in a wholly accessible way, and his research in primary sources gives the book its powerful human element.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

The Black Death raced across Europe from the 1340s to the early 1350s, killing a third of the population. Drawing on recent research as well as firsthand accounts, veteran author Kelly (Three on the Edge, etc.) describes how infected rats, brought by Genoese trading ships returning from the East and docked in Sicily, carried fleas that spread the disease when they bit humans. Two types of plague seem to have predominated: bubonic plague, characterized by swollen lymph nodes and the bubo, a type of boil; and pneumonic plague, characterized by lung infection and spitting blood. Those stricken with plague died quickly. Survivors often attempted to flee, but the plague was so widespread that there was virtually no escape from infection. Kelly recounts the varied reactions to the plague. The citizens of Venice, for example, forged a civic response to the crisis, while Avignon fell apart. The author details the emergence of Flagellants, unruly gangs who believed the plague was a punishment from God and roamed the countryside flogging themselves as a penance. Rounding up and burning Jews, whom they blamed for the plague, the Flagellants also sparked widespread anti-Semitism. This is an excellent overview, accessible and engrossing. Agent, Ellen Levine. (Feb. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe. For his tenth book, science writer Kelly (Three on the Edge, 1999, etc.) delivers a cultural history of the Black Death based on accounts left by those who witnessed the greatest natural disaster in human history. Spawned somewhere on the steppes of Central Asia, the plague arrived in Europe in 1347, when a Genoese ship carried it to Sicily from a trading post on the Black Sea. Over the next four years, at a time when, as the author notes, "nothing moved faster than the fastest horse," the disease spread through the entire continent. Eventually, it claimed 25 million lives, one third of the European population. A thermonuclear war would be an equivalent disaster by today's standards, Kelly avers. Much of the narrative depends on the reminiscences of monks, doctors, and other literate people who buried corpses or cared for the sick. As a result, the author has plenty of anecdotes. Common scenes include dogs and children running naked, dirty, and wild through the streets of an empty village, their masters and parents dead; Jews burnt at the stake, scapegoats in a paranoid Christian world; and physicians at the University of Paris consulting the stars to divine cures. These tales give the author opportunities to show Europeans-filthy, malnourished, living in densely packed cities-as easy targets for rats and their plague-bearing fleas. They also allow him to ramble. Kelly has a tendency to lose the trail of the disease in favor of tangents about this or that king, pope, or battle. He returns to his topic only when he shifts to a different country or city in a new chapter, giving the book a haphazard feel. Remarkably, the storyends on a hopeful note. After so many perished, Europe was forced to develop new forms of technology to make up for the labor shortage, laying the groundwork for the modern era. Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare. Agent: Ellen Levine/Levine Greenberg Literary Agency

From the Publisher

John Kelly gives the reader a ferocious, pictorial account of the horrific ravages of [the] plague…an emotionally accessible narrative, animated by wrenchingly vivid tableaus and alarming first-hand witness accounts. . . that give the reader an intimate sense of day-to-day life in medieval Europe.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“Splendidly written. Kelly has written a popular history based on the best scholarship available, and written it very well indeed.” — Detroit Free Press (4 out of 4 stars)

“A fascinating account of the plague that swept Europe and Asia in the 14th century, killing about half the population. It’s a frightening reminder of what could happen today.” — Nelson DeMille, The Birmingham News

“Stunning. . . . Kelly combines distinguished scholarship in the science, medicine and European history [and] meets some of the world’s darkest days as if he were a forensic sleuth who must first re-create the ambience of the victims’ world before tracking down their deaths. He endows The Great Mortality with the sheer immediacy ancient history yields to only a few.” — Houston Chronicle

“John Kelly combines the skills of a medical writer with those of a historian . . . [he] offers an insightful and rather frightening exploration of medieval medicine. Exhaustively researched and relying largely on accounts of those who lived through the Black Death, Kelly’s narrative offers us an intimate exploration of a world falling apart.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Timely and welcome . . . conveys in excruciating but necessary detail a powerful sense of just how terribly Europe suffered, and just how resilient it was in the face of what seemed to many certain extinction.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“It’s almost unethical to write a book on human cataclysm as entertaining as The Great Mortality. Strange that a book about the worst natural disaster in European history should be so full of life. This book may be written in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman but there is a seething vitality here that is Kelly’s alone.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Black Death is history’s best-known pandemic, but until now its full history has not been written. In The Great Mortality John Kelly gives a human face to the 14th century disaster that claimed 75 million lives, a third of the world’s population.” — Oakland Tribune

“The Great Mortality skillfully draws on eyewitness accounts to construct a journal of the plague years.” — New York Times Book Review

“A compelling and bone-chilling account.” — Tampa Tribune

“This sweeping, viscerally exciting book contributes to a literature of perpetual fascination.” — Booklist (starred review)

“A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe…putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.” — Kirkus Reviews

“There has never been a better researched, better written, or more engaging account of the epidemic the world has ever known. Superb and fascinating.” — Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa

“A compelling and eminently readable portrait.” — Library Journal

“THE GREAT MORTALITY is a chilling account of a global siege, public pits, death-carts, silent villages and empty streets.” — Charleston Post & Courier

“Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.” — Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb 

“A rich and evocative narrative history of the late Middle Ages, written in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman, which brings alive the time of the Black Death. I couldn’t stop reading Kelly’s story. It’s a work of brilliance and wisdom.” — Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

“John Kelly approaches the story of the greatest tragedy in history like a forensic detective who must first recreate the life of the victims before examining their deaths. He probes through the debris of their virtues and sins as well as the mere foibles of daily life to reveal the rich and colorful world that was suddenly ripped apart and nearly destroyed by climate change, famine, and, ultimately, the horrors of the worst plague in world history. . . . Kelly’s book might also be a warning about our own future.” — Jack Weatherford, professor of anthropology at Macalester College and author of Genghis Khan

New York Times

An emotionally accessible narrative, animated by wrenchingly vivid tableaus and alarming first-hand witness accounts…that give the reader an intimate sense of day-to-day life in medieval Europe.”

Houston Chronicle

Kelly.. endows The Great Mortality with the sheer immediacy ancient history yields to only a few.”

AudioFile

With polished elegance, narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies captures the grim ironies and mordant humor that underlie Kelly’s account…A timely window into the distant past, and into our own troubled present. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille

It’s a frightening reminder of what could happen today.”

Detroit Free Press (4 out of 4 stars)

Splendidly written. Kelly has written a popular history based on the best scholarship available, and written it very well indeed.”

Tampa Tribune

A compelling and bone-chilling account.”

New York Times Book Review

Skillfully draws on eyewitness accounts to construct a journal of the plague years.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune

It’s almost unethical to write a book on human cataclysm as entertaining as The Great Mortality. Strange that a book about the worst natural disaster in European history should be so full of life. This book may be written in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman but there is a seething vitality here that is Kelly’s alone.

Oakland Tribune

The Black Death is history’s best-known pandemic, but until now its full history has not been written. In The Great Mortality John Kelly gives a human face to the 14th century disaster that claimed 75 million lives, a third of the world’s population.

San Francisco Chronicle

John Kelly combines the skills of a medical writer with those of a historian . . . [he] offers an insightful and rather frightening exploration of medieval medicine. Exhaustively researched and relying largely on accounts of those who lived through the Black Death, Kelly’s narrative offers us an intimate exploration of a world falling apart.

Nelson DeMille

A fascinating account of the plague that swept Europe and Asia in the 14th century, killing about half the population. It’s a frightening reminder of what could happen today.

San Francisco Chronicle

John Kelly combines the skills of a medical writer with those of a historian . . . [he] offers an insightful and rather frightening exploration of medieval medicine. Exhaustively researched and relying largely on accounts of those who lived through the Black Death, Kelly’s narrative offers us an intimate exploration of a world falling apart.

Charleston Post & Courier

THE GREAT MORTALITY is a chilling account of a global siege, public pits, death-carts, silent villages and empty streets.

Simon Winchester

There has never been a better researched, better written, or more engaging account of the epidemic the world has ever known. Superb and fascinating.

Jack Weatherford

John Kelly approaches the story of the greatest tragedy in history like a forensic detective who must first recreate the life of the victims before examining their deaths. He probes through the debris of their virtues and sins as well as the mere foibles of daily life to reveal the rich and colorful world that was suddenly ripped apart and nearly destroyed by climate change, famine, and, ultimately, the horrors of the worst plague in world history. . . . Kelly’s book might also be a warning about our own future.

Richard Preston

A rich and evocative narrative history of the late Middle Ages, written in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman, which brings alive the time of the Black Death. I couldn’t stop reading Kelly’s story. It’s a work of brilliance and wisdom.

Richard Rhodes

Powerful, rich with details, moving, humane, and full of important lessons for an age when weapons of mass destruction are loose among us.

Booklist (starred review)

This sweeping, viscerally exciting book contributes to a literature of perpetual fascination.

Charleston Post & Courier

THE GREAT MORTALITY is a chilling account of a global siege, public pits, death-carts, silent villages and empty streets.

Detroit Free Press (**** 4 out of 4 stars)

Splendidly written. Kelly has written a popular history based on the best scholarship available, and written it very well indeed.

Philadelphia Inquirer

...splendidly written...

The Guardian

A compellingly vivid account.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159903761
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Great Mortality
An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

Chapter One

Oimmeddam

Feodosiya sits on the eastern coast of the crimea, a rectangular spit of land where the Eurasian steppe stops to dip its toe into the Black Sea. Today the city is a rusty wasteland of post-Soviet decay. But in the Middle Ages, when Feodosiya was called Caffa and a Genoese proconsul sat in a white palace above the harbor, the city was one of the fastest-growing ports in the medieval world. In 1266, when the Genoese first arrived in southern Russia, Caffa was a primitive fishing village tucked away far from the eyes of God and man on the dark side of the Crimea -- a collection of windswept lean-tos set between an empty sea and a ring of low-rising hills. Eighty years later, seventy thousand to eighty thousand people coursed through Caffa's narrow streets, and a dozen different tongues echoed through its noisy markets. Thrusting church spires and towers crowded the busy skyline, while across the bustling town docks flowed Merdacaxi silks from Central Asia, sturgeon from the Don, slaves from the Ukraine, and timber and furs from the great Russian forests to the north. Surveying Caffa in 1340, a Muslim visitor declared it a handsome town of "beautiful markets with a worthy port in which I saw two hundred ships big and small."

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Genoese willed Caffa into existence, but not a large exaggeration. No city-state bestrode the age of city-states with a more operatic sense of destiny -- none possessed a more fervent desire to cut a bella figura in the world -- than Genoa. The city's galleys could be found in every port from London to the Black Sea, its merchants in every trading center from Aleppo (Syria) to Peking. The invincible courage and extraordinary seamanship of the Genoese mariner was legendary. Long before Christopher Columbus, there were the Vivaldi brothers, Ugolino and Vadino, who fell off the face of the earth laughing at death as they searched for a sea route to India. Venice, Genoa's great rival, might carp that she was "a city of sea without fish, ... men without faith, and women without shame," but Genoese grandeur was impervious to such insults. In Caffa, Genoa built a monument to itself. The port's sunlit piazzas and fine stone houses, the lovely women who walked along its quays with the brocades of Persia on their backs and the perfumes of Arabia gracing their skin, were monuments to Genoese wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory.

As an Italian poet of the time noted,
And so many are the Genoese
And so spread ... throughout the world
That wherever one goes and stays
He makes another Genoa there.

Caffa's meteoric rise to international prominence also owed something to geography and economics. Between 1250 and 1350 the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa, located at the southeastern edge of European Russia, was perfectly situated to exploit the new global economy. To the north, through a belt of dense forest, lay the most magnificent land route in the medieval world, the Eurasian steppe, a great green ribbon of rolling prairie, swaying high grass, and big sky that could deliver a traveler from the Crimea to China in eight to twelve months. To the west lay the teeming port of Constantinople, wealthiest city in Christendom, and beyond Constantinople, the slave markets of the Levant, where big-boned, blond Ukrainians fetched a handsome price at auction. Farther west lay Europe, where the tangy spices of Ceylon and Java and the sparkling diamonds of Golconda were in great demand. And between these great poles of the medieval world lay Caffa, with its "worthy port" and phalanx of mighty Russian rivers: the Volga and Don immediately to the east, the Dnieper to the west. In the first eight decades of Genoese rule the former fishing village doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size. Then the population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time; new neighborhoods and churches sprang up; six thousand new houses rose inside the city, and then an additional eleven thousand in the muddy flats beyond the town walls. Every year more ships arrived, and more fish and slaves and timber flowed across Caffa's wharves. On a fine spring evening in 1340, one can imagine the Genoese proconsul standing on his balcony, surveying the tall-masted ships bobbing on a twilight tide in the harbor, and thinking that Caffa would go on growing forever, that nothing would ever change, except that the city would grow ever bigger and wealthier. That dream, of course, was as fantastic a fairy tale in the fourteenth century as it is today. Explosive growth -- and human hubris -- always come with a price.

Before the arrival of the Genoese, Caffa's vulnerability to ecological disaster extended no farther than the few thousand meters of the Black Sea its fishermen fished and the half moon of sullen, windswept hills behind the city. By 1340 trade routes linked the port to places half a world away -- places even the Genoese knew little about -- and in some of the places strange and terrible things were happening. In the 1330s there were reports of tremendous environmental upheaval in China. Canton and Houkouang were said to have been lashed by cycles of torrential rain and parching drought, and in Honan mile-long swarms of locusts were reported to have blacked out the sun. Legend also has it that in this period, the earth under China gave way and whole villages disappeared into fissures and cracks in the ground. An earthquake is reported to have swallowed part of a city, Kingsai, then a mountain, Tsincheou, and in the mountains of Ki-ming-chan, to have torn open a hole large enough to create a new "lake a hundred leagues long." In Tche, it was said that 5 million people were killed in the upheavals. On the coast of the South China Sea, the ominous rumble of "subterranean thunder" was heard ...

The Great Mortality
An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time. Copyright © by John Kelly. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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