The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich
Europe went through the black death in the middle ages, severely reducing its population. Then it popped back bigger than ever and launched empires that controlled most of the world. This book starts by looking at the plague. There are evolving explanations for how it occurred and spread. Bubonic plague has gone in and out of favor. There does seem to a connection with rat populations. The black death did strike areas at different times and different mortality. It appears it also struck other parts of the world, such as Asia.
However, the plague itself is only the first part of this book. How did the activities of the various populations react to it? How did it change their behaviors and history? What was the next phase in history after the plague. Europe was even more fragmented than it is now. Economic activity and the associated trading were starting to boom. Some places, like Geneo were heavily involved in financial and mercenary activity. Europe was eager to spread its wings throughout the world. How much did the plague contribute to all these activities? The book paints a very broad picture that is perhaps a little too expansive.
The 14th century is probably best known for the plague of the "black death" that swept over Europe. Huge numbers of people died. The middle ages were winding down and the Renaissance was still a little way off. Written records from the time period were fairly sparse. This makes the task of creating a comprehensive history challenging. A Distant Mirror was not quite up to the task. It feels like a long amalgamation of facts without a very concrete story. There was a lot of stuff that happened. There were leaders that did things. Death, debauchery and other things happened. Every now and then there would be an interesting section. Even the narration of the audiobook was hard to understand. For a history of the 14th century, we are best waiting until somebody creates a more concise work.
This Pinsky translation of Inferno attempts to translate the "everyday Itanlian" of Dante to everyday English. At the start, this seems to work. However, Dante fills the book with details of many local Florentines. Alas, these don't translate well to modern days. (Perhaps if we add Bush, Tom Cruise and Obama we'll get a more true translation.) I also began to lose the flow of the narrative as it continued on. At the start, it seemed to go through degrees of "badness". The people were getting progressively worse. Dante was criticizing them for their sins, and comparing the sins of the well known to the sins of the not-so-popular. However, it later seemed to fall into a "tell-all" book where he criticized the local Florentine luminaries.