He's No William Manchester
Written: Aug 30 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Non threatening history
Cons: Not entirely accurate and light on science.
The Bottom Line: If you're interested in the Plague, this will not be a bad place to start, just don't stop here.
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| Darkmistress's Full Review: Norman Cantor - In the Wake of the Plague: The Bla... |
Overall, this is a good book, and yet I find myself torn. The writing is engaging and the historical analysis is interesting. However. It isn’t entirely accurate and the author has a slim grasp of science.
I have always been fascinated by the Middle Ages, particularly the Plantagenets. This book actually deals with a period of time slightly after my interest, but how many books are there on the 12th and 13th centuries? I’m also interested in disease and epidemics. In a first season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a teacher is lecturing on the Black Plague and she asks the class what some of the outcomes of the plague were. I started reeling off answers the first time I saw it and I was right. The Black Plague is one of those periods of time when everything changed in a very short period of time and some of those changes are still evident. It’s also next to impossible for anything like it to happen again. For one, we have germ theory. For another, we have media that is willing to whip the public up in to an isolationist frenzy over anthrax and West Nile virus when both those threats combined wouldn’t even show up in the radar screen in comparison with plague. The Black Plague wiped out one third of the population of Europe. It changed the landscape, sparked rebellions, altered employee / employer relations, and created the property law we use today.
The book is written in a light, easy to understand style. It’s divided into 3 sections, the biomedical context, social context and historical context. As stated, the biomedical section is a bit light and only runs about 25 pages. Cantor’s theory is that there were not one but 2 plagues running concurrent, bubonic plague and a serious outbreak of anthrax. He does supply enough evidence to this theory that I’ll buy it, at least for the duration of the book. If he really wants me to believe this I’m going to need some more background on anthrax and maybe he should get together with Laurie Garrett for that book because she is marvelous at putting medicalese into English and not making it scary. And it is just a theory because I’ve recently read that another theory holds that the Great Plague wasn’t bubonic at all, but something else entirely.
The societal section is the longest portion of the book. In it, Cantor discusses stuff like property law, political machinations, and worker’s rights. He also makes a huge gaffe. "The latter (King John I) came to be called John Lackland because he lost the ancestral territories of the royal family in Normandy and Anjou to the king of France and some of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s vast domain in western France as well." This is inaccurate. I can pull three books off my shelves alone that will prove John was referred to as ‘Lackland’ even before the death of his father, Henry II, because his father wouldn’t give him titles and lands so he couldn’t rebel like his older brothers had done. Why is this such a big deal? If Cantor will make a factual slip like this, what else has he got wrong? He can be trusted, but only to a point. Other than that, the section is well laid out and illuminated with good examples.
The historical section pulls the lens back a bit to show the large shifts in thought. Sort of a yawner, but you’re nearly finished and this is the stuff that would be on an exam.
And last but not least there is the critical bibliography in which the author attempts to convince you that his book is the best thing available. Pretty much any title that could be competition is good but … as far as Cantor is concerned. Oddly, he didn’t mention either of the 2 books I would have recommended. He does mention Laurie Garrett’s Betrayal of Trust which tells me where he got his medical info (and, since it’s second hand written for lay people, why it’s so thin.)
Over all, it’s a good book. The writing style is not overly scholarly and well organized. If this looks like a subject you might be interested in, this is not a bad place to start. It’s also not a great place to start. For a better discussion on Black Plague try to locate Otto Friedrich’s The End of the World. It contains one chapter on Black Plague that is well worth the whole book. In fact, every essay in the book is well worth the whole book. For a better book on the Middle Ages in general find a copy of A World Lit Only By Fire by William Manchester. Not so much on plague, but a great and engaging book about the period. Go ahead and read In the Wake Of the Plague, just don’t consider it the last word on the subject. And don’t believe everything Cantor says.
Recommended:
Yes
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