The Black Death

by Timothy Levi Biel, Maurie Manning (Illustrator), Michael Spackman (Illustrator)

Describes the social and economic conditions in medieval Europe at the outbreak of the Black Death and the causes and effects of the epidemic.

64 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, though on a grisly topic, was enjoyable to read because it provided me with so much needed information. I'm a college student and this helped me greatly with my research paper. It explained how the plague developed by modern science so I could understand exactly how it started, but related the beliefs of the people back then to how the disease came to be, because they had no understanding of the disease. It even gave all of the activities they practiced in hopes of curing the disease, and the superstitions they relied on. It gave a lot of information on life back then in the 1300s, how society ran and the classes of people and things like that that gave a better understanding of how things were before the disease. My only complaint is the author spent more time talking about classes of people than the actual plague and it took a long time to actually get to the disease. I also wished that it mentioned the Great Plague of 1665 in London, but this was entirely on the plagues during the 1300s. It also went too into detail in germs and ticks and antibiotics and vaccines at the end, which wasn't really related to the black death but was about modern-day diseases. They even showed pictures of blood cells and ticks, which I could have done without.
I would definitely want to buy this book for writing about the plague or even just life in the middle ages.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this years ago for a paper I was writing on The Black Death while at community college. This reminded me of House on Hound Hill, which took place at the time of the black plague, so reading more information on that subject was really interesting. There was a little romance in that book, so it shows you can make something romantic, even if there's nothing romantic about the subject at all.
This would be a great book if you need it for a research paper, or are just interested in the black plague.
A few years later, I actually found this at the bookshop I volunteer at, the exact copy I used for my research paper! Of course I bought it, so now I can refer back to it any time I want to.

[Cane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it, it was a bit misleading and all over the place, but very informational and the drawings broke up the text really nicely.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

TUL