Donna K. (tomeworm) reviewed on 4/5/2008 + 52 more book reviews

"In October 1347, at about the start of the month, twelve Genoese galleys put in to the port of Messina [Sicily]."

"So begins, in almost fairy-tale fashion, a contemporary account of the worst natural disaster in European history-what we call the Black Death, and what the generation who lived through it called 'la moria grandissima': 'the great mortality.' The medieval plague, however, was more than just a European catastrophe. From the bustling ports along the China Sea to the fishing villages of coastal Greenland, almost no area of Eurasia escaped the wrath of the medieval pestilence. And along with people died dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, cattle, and camels. For a brief moment in the middle of the fourteenth century, the words of Genesis 7:21 seemed about to be realized: 'All flesh died that moved upon the earth.'"

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