Plague, Paul Slack
Plague, Paul Slack
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Plague
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Paul Slack

Narrator: Gareth Richards

Unabridged: 4 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/01/2021


Synopsis

Throughout history plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes. It was responsible for the "Plague of Justinian" in 542, the Black Death of 1348, and the Great Plague of London in 1665, as well as for devastating epidemics in China and India between the 1890s and 1920s. In the twenty-first century Coronavirus pandemics have served as a powerful reminder that we have not escaped the global impact of epidemic diseases.

In this Very Short Introduction, Paul Slack takes a global approach to explore the historical and social impact of plague over the centuries, looking at the ways in which it has been interpreted, and the powerful images it has left behind in art and literature. Examining what plague meant for those who suffered from it, and how governments began to fight against it, he demonstrates the impact plague has had on modern notions of public health, and how it has shaped our history. This new edition also includes evidence on the nature of plague taken from recent discoveries in ancient DNA as well as new research on plague in the Middle East.

About Paul Slack

Paul Slack is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern Social History at Oxford University. He is the author of The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England and The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England, which won the Samuel Pepys Prize for 2015. He has been the editor of the journal Past and Present, is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was principal of Linacre College, Oxford, until 2010.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jayaprakash on August 21, 2013

In the concluding chapter of this book, author Paul Slack says 'histories of plague have only modest lessons to offer.' He means that studying the three main plague outbreaks in recorded history cannot offer us a definitive prescription for avoiding or dealing with future pandemics, whether or not o......more

Goodreads review by Ian on August 24, 2019

This was definitely an impulse grab at the library; I was picking up some other stuff, and noticed in the relatively small nonfiction section at our branch (not proportionally; the whole branch is pretty small) that they seemed to have a number of these Very Short Introduction books scattered about.......more

Goodreads review by Ellen on February 07, 2021

Posed several mostly unanswerable questions - food for thought. The only disease in scope of this book was the bacteria that cause bubonic plague.......more

Goodreads review by Bojan on June 07, 2012

Plague is the prototypical deadly and devastating infectious disease. Over the period of more than a millennium, plague outbreaks have decimated many parts of the world, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Europe. Almost all of the European medieval life has been lived in the shadow of the possible......more

Goodreads review by Zev on May 10, 2014

Loved the pocket-able size, made for a great subway read. Very intelligent fact filled essay. Great if you like anthropology / sociology.......more