About this ebook
A fascinating work of detective history, The Black Death traces the causes and far-reaching consequences of this infamous outbreak of plague that spread across the continent of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Drawing on sources as diverse as monastic manuscripts and dendrochronological studies (which measure growth rings in trees), historian Robert S. Gottfried demonstrates how a bacillus transmitted by rat fleas brought on an ecological reign of terror -- killing one European in three, wiping out entire villages and towns, and rocking the foundation of medieval society and civilization.
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Ratings and reviews
3.7
11 reviews
A Google user
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July 18, 2012
Gottfried was fired from his job as professor of history after this book was reviewed by Stuart Jenks in _The Journal of Economic History_ (Sept. 1986, pp. 815-23). Jenks showed that Gottfried had fabricated sources, plagiarized passages and ideas from Philip Ziegler's book on the Black Death, and drawn conclusions that cannot be substantiated from any reliable sources.
A Google user
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1986/203p/222
About the author
Robert S. Gottfried is Professor of History and Director of Medieval Studies at Rutgers University. Among his other books is Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth Century England.
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