The Black Death — John Kelly

Kelly reconstructs the Black Death from its origins in Central Asia through its devastation of Europe in the 1340s, combining the medical with the social and the political. He is particularly interested in the human responses — the flagellant movements, the persecution of Jewish communities, the collapse of institutional authority — and what they reveal about how medieval people understood causation, guilt, and divine judgment. A lucid account of an event that killed perhaps a third of Europe's population.