A vivid and sweeping new history of the outbreak ... The results are mixed, betraying the stark limits of this approach and the need for a kind of history that fully integrates anguished medieval chronicles with modern molecular evidence.
Takes the reader on a vivid tour ... Asbridge evokes terror and pity by focusing in on what he calls 'micro-histories' of particular individuals caught up in the horror ... Asbridge has mined bureaucratic records to argue that some places were far more badly affected than it was previously thought.
Not only an ambitious task but also a brave one to attempt to write a history of the disease ... The Black Death: A global history mostly succeeds in doing so ... A commendable strength of the book is the sustained attention it gives to the Islamic world. Muslims’ experiences are as central in Asbridge’s story as those of Christians ... The result is a riotous panoply of medieval Christian, Muslim and, to a lesser extent, Jewish life ... An unrelenting sameness nevertheless flattens this rich variety of people and places into a rather dispiriting blur.
A vividly 'close-up' account ... Focusing on the experience of individuals who had told their own tales, it brings to life individuals in every social class ... This long story of an infection with a long history as well as an extensive spread is told engagingly, through examples and lively characterisation. The notes give full details of sources, though an additional bibliography would be helpful.
Learned but horribly compelling ... Asbridge skilfully combines a global narrative of the plague with examples of horrendous personal tragedy to build a powerful portrait of a world that stared death in the face ... Asbridge also writes sensitively of the considerable psychological burden that unimaginable loss and the constant threat of new outbreaks placed on survivors.
Historian Asbridge (The Crusades) revisits long-term impacts of 'the most lethal natural disaster in human history' in this striking revisionist account of the Black Death ... This deeply researched study of global disaster has great resonance for the present moment.
