King Death: The Black Death and Its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England

Rating:
Summary: Both accessible and scholarly
Review: More professional historians should write books like this, and more publishers should encourage them to do so. King Death is well-written (no academic baffle-gab), well-illustrated, and well-designed. It is a joy to handle and read.

The subject of this book is the long-term consequences for English society of the Black Death. (If you are looking for an account of the plague itself, you should probably go elsewhere.) Colin Platt works his way through the effects on religion, economy, marriage and family in topical chapters.

The general reader will get a lot out of it -- will come away with a much greater knowledge of later medieval England and of the effects of population trends on society. I suspect many scholars will find this a useful book, too. This is not a rehash of long-known material, but a study that's as up-to-date as it is accessible.

Rating:
Summary: Not what you think!
Review: This book is indeed scholarly but to whom? Much of the data is concerning useless facts. It is not intended to inform of the Black Death as I thought it would. There are no scientific facts written; only boring useless facts of land ownerships and church renovations and construction. I have gained nothing from this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not what you think!
Review: This book is indeed scholarly but to whom? Much of the data is concerning useless facts. It is not intended to inform of the Black Death as I thought it would. There are no scientific facts written; only boring useless facts of land ownerships and church renovations and construction. I have gained nothing from this book.

Rating:
Summary: More for British Historians...
Review: This piece came to my attention while conducting research for a thesis on the Black Death. Unfortunately, Platt's work is really only designed for British Historians. While he does recount how resurgence of bubonic plague in late-medieval England affected the country's economic and labor systems, he does so without consistancy. The bulk of this text provides overly detailed examinations of how the plague spread between specific towns and counties, with only minimal, and rather sporadic, discussion of how society as a whole reacted to the epidemic. Again, this work will not give you a holistic viewpoint of how the plague interacted with social, cultural, medical, etc factors of the day. Its only use is to those who wish to understand, in depth, how the labor system of late-medieval England changed due to the fluctuating mortality rates.