Best Seller

The Black Death

Name: The Black Death
Price: 38.00 USD
Availability: PreOrder
Author: Thomas Asbridge
ISBN: 9780593129166

Hardcover $38.00

Available on May 26, 2026 | 544 Pages

Preorder from:

$38.00

Available on May 26, 2026 | 544 Pages

Preorder from:

A sweeping history of humanity’s greatest natural disaster—the Black Death—that reveals the true global impact and terrible human cost of this calamity, from the renowned author of The Crusades and The Greatest Knight.

“Terrific—and truly terrifying. Thomas Asbridge puts a human face—or rather multiple faces—on the Black Death.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C.

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Black Death was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia.

Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire.

The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo, and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death—from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers—laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive.

Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.

“Terrific—and truly terrifying . . . Asbridge puts a human face—or rather multiple faces—on the Black Death, the most famous pandemic to have afflicted humankind prior to [the pandemic]. The parallels between the two jump off the pages, thereby making this shockingly detailed discussion of events six hundred years ago both recognizable and utterly relevant. . . . One of the best books ever to have been written on this topic.”—Eric Cline, author of 1177 B.C

“Comprehensive history of a devastating plague that stretched over centuries. . . . a capable work that, as modern readers will understand, underscores the fragility of societies in the face of pandemic.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A rich, multifaceted history that finally makes sense of the research that has shifted our picture of the Black Death so much over the last twenty years . . . Asbridge’s account of how the Black Death was finally identified reads like a detective novel. . . . Truly mind-opening history, on a global scale that makes you rethink what you thought you knew.”—Lyndal Roper, author of Martin Luther

“Thomas Asbridge does for the Black Death what John Keegan did for battle: evoking the feeling of being there, recapturing the experience of the sufferers and survivors. Admiring the flawless scholarship, in language that is lucid, vivid, uncluttered with theory and uninfected by jargon, I’d be tempted—if it weren’t too paradoxical—to say that he makes plague a pleasure.”—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Millennium and Civilizations

“An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large-scale social, cultural, and economic histories of the ravages of the Black Death as it spread across the globe. Asbridge’s definitive biography of Yersinia pestis, the germ that caused the world’s deadliest disease, is a masterpiece.”—Thomas Laqueur, author of The Work of the Dead

“This accessible and engaging global history of the Black Death takes readers on a grand tour of the plague’s ravages, revealing the lived experience both of the leading figures of the day and of ordinary men and women struggling to make sense of this calamity.”—John Aberth, author of The Black Death and Doctoring the Black Death

Author

Thomas Asbridge

Thomas Asbridge is a historian of the Middle Ages, previously specializing in the study of the crusades, knighthood and chivalry, and is Reader in Medieval History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land and The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power behind Five English Thrones. He also wrote and presented the landmark three-part BBC television series The Crusades.

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The Black Death

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By Thomas Asbridge