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catbrigand's review against another edition
1.0
Let me open my review with a quote.
"As Edward III aged (he didn't die--from gonorrhea--until 1377), the Black Prince took over leadership of the English continental armies, laying waste to huge parts of France and Spain. The Black Prince, overcome by malaria he contracted fighting in Castile, died a few years before the horrible old man, who was clutching his venereal mistress to the end...
That today we may look back on the English king of the fourteenth century as a kind of destructive and merciless force, while to nearly all articulate and literate contemporaries he was a constitutional king and very model of chivalry and aristocratic honor, illuminates a gap between our world and fourteenth-century Europe."
Well, gosh. You mean to say that we can't look at the past through a modern lens because the past doesn't conform to our values? Dang, sir. You proceed to do that for a lot of the book.
This marks one of the only times in my life I've actually kept reading a book I hate because I hated it. My complaints with the book are many. Generally, I found it a rambling mess that actually did little to examine the world made by the plague and which was written by someone seemingly allergic to citations or editing (see: conflating 'weary' for 'wary,' a mistake so on the rookie level I was astonished). It is riddled with weird parenthetical asides revealing totally irrelevant information as well as the author's opinion (see: referring to the Cologne Cathedral as 'a monstrous pile' and referring to Eleanor of Aquitaine's 'heated loins'). Mostly it's largely inaccurate in places.
Some of the inaccuracies were slight, yet annoying, because at time of publication they were known not to be true, such as referring to Ukraine with 'the' in front of it or citing high-fat diets rich in dairy as a direct cause of heart disease or referring to dresses as corseted despite the corset not being invented yet. Some were really basic medieval history errors, such as referring to Philippa Chaucer (wife of Geoffrey) as the mistress of John of Gaunt, and thus the cause of all of Geoffrey Chaucer's good fortune and patronage at court. This is patently false: there is adequate evidence to demonstrate Chaucer was prized for his wit independently of his family, and Philippa was not Gaunt's mistress, but the elder sister of his longstanding mistress and eventual wife, Katherine Swynford.
The book also contains speculation ans conjecture that I don't think belongs in a history book, not because I have an issue with historians doing any of those things, but because of the complete lack of evidence Cantor provides. This includes: coming uncomfortably close to blaming the Jews for their own medieval persecution, blaming the cause of the plague and other epidemics on cosmic dust from passing meteors, and a weird, rambling mess of a chapter on the African Rift Valley and our humanoid ancestors and how it relates to epidemiology.
This marks one of the first times I've actually given a one-star review. The quality of the book I read is so dissonant with Cantor's reputation as a medieval historian that I almost felt like checking they were the same person.
"As Edward III aged (he didn't die--from gonorrhea--until 1377), the Black Prince took over leadership of the English continental armies, laying waste to huge parts of France and Spain. The Black Prince, overcome by malaria he contracted fighting in Castile, died a few years before the horrible old man, who was clutching his venereal mistress to the end...
That today we may look back on the English king of the fourteenth century as a kind of destructive and merciless force, while to nearly all articulate and literate contemporaries he was a constitutional king and very model of chivalry and aristocratic honor, illuminates a gap between our world and fourteenth-century Europe."
Well, gosh. You mean to say that we can't look at the past through a modern lens because the past doesn't conform to our values? Dang, sir. You proceed to do that for a lot of the book.
This marks one of the only times in my life I've actually kept reading a book I hate because I hated it. My complaints with the book are many. Generally, I found it a rambling mess that actually did little to examine the world made by the plague and which was written by someone seemingly allergic to citations or editing (see: conflating 'weary' for 'wary,' a mistake so on the rookie level I was astonished). It is riddled with weird parenthetical asides revealing totally irrelevant information as well as the author's opinion (see: referring to the Cologne Cathedral as 'a monstrous pile' and referring to Eleanor of Aquitaine's 'heated loins'). Mostly it's largely inaccurate in places.
Some of the inaccuracies were slight, yet annoying, because at time of publication they were known not to be true, such as referring to Ukraine with 'the' in front of it or citing high-fat diets rich in dairy as a direct cause of heart disease or referring to dresses as corseted despite the corset not being invented yet. Some were really basic medieval history errors, such as referring to Philippa Chaucer (wife of Geoffrey) as the mistress of John of Gaunt, and thus the cause of all of Geoffrey Chaucer's good fortune and patronage at court. This is patently false: there is adequate evidence to demonstrate Chaucer was prized for his wit independently of his family, and Philippa was not Gaunt's mistress, but the elder sister of his longstanding mistress and eventual wife, Katherine Swynford.
The book also contains speculation ans conjecture that I don't think belongs in a history book, not because I have an issue with historians doing any of those things, but because of the complete lack of evidence Cantor provides. This includes: coming uncomfortably close to blaming the Jews for their own medieval persecution, blaming the cause of the plague and other epidemics on cosmic dust from passing meteors, and a weird, rambling mess of a chapter on the African Rift Valley and our humanoid ancestors and how it relates to epidemiology.
This marks one of the first times I've actually given a one-star review. The quality of the book I read is so dissonant with Cantor's reputation as a medieval historian that I almost felt like checking they were the same person.
ipanzica's review against another edition
4.0
An easy to read history of the black plague that is entertaining and factual.
rpmahnke's review against another edition
2.0
This book is a hot mess. Perhaps because of Cantor's stature, it did not get the editing it deserved. It's not clear what the book is about, since Cantor cannot sustain or develop arguments, and instead bounds off on odd tangents. He never organizes things chronologically, or really in any other way. I bought a remaindered copy, and I want my money back. I only finished it because I'm stubborn.
ahanyok's review against another edition
1.0
Inaccurate in obvious ways (claims that women went through menopause in their 30s) and barely touched on the plague. It tried to dumb things down too much and ended up not saying much of value. I made it about halfway through before I lost interest.