Written by John Kelly
Any historical scholar who quotes Norman Cantor makes an immediate, positive impression on me.
John Kelley’s The Great Mortality, effortlessly covering the enormous scope of the Black Death, is cut from the same cloth as the best works of Mr. Cantor. This is a work of precision, powerful description, and another example of what “concise” actually means. It covers so much scope, from the first arrival of the plague in the east, to its final death throes, that it seems almost impossible that one could fit this subject matter into 300 pages…or, at least, do it justice with only 300 pages.
But credit John Kelly for his extraordinary achievement. He brings Mr. Cantor’s concise style to the table, and combines it with the storytelling journey of the plague itself. He follows its path, offering vignettes (which can border on the shocking and the terrifying) of its effect on each society, one-by-one…and brings in extra material from other times to link the matter to broader, and more contemporary, contexts. The end result is positively breathtaking…another work of history you can’t help but go through like an insatiable buzz saw. The best epics are the ones that actually occur in the real world…and the Black Death is the final word on human tragedy. Only the Holocaust comes close to rivalling it…and THAT was the final word on man-made tragedy. THIS, on the other hand, is the raw power of nature…and how civilization was brought to its knees by a microscopic organism.
I wouldn’t hesitate to say that The Great Mortality equals what a fictional masterpiece such as The Pillars of the Earth managed to achieve…but using only one third of the page count! Take that, Ken Follett!
