From the Brink of the Apocalypse: ...Later Middle Ages by John Aberth - HC(2000)

From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages by John Aberth, hardcover edition published by Routledge (2000)"The later Middle Ages was a period of unparalleled chaos and misery -in the form of war, famine, plague, and death. At times it must have seemed like the end of the world was truly at hand. And yet, as John Aberth reveals in this lively work, late medieval Europeans' cultural assumptions uniquely equipped them to face up positively to the huge problems that they faced.

Relying on rich literary, historical and material sources, the book brings this period and its beliefs and attitudes vividly to life. Taking his themes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, John Aberth describes how the lives of ordinary people were transformed by a series of crises, including the Great Famine, the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. Yet he also shows how prayers, chronicles, poetry, and especially commemorative art reveal an optimistic people, whose belief in the apocalypse somehow gave them the ability to transcend the woes they faced on this earth." - Amazon .com

"The book is not an ornate description of the late middle ages. Rather it attempts to sieve data into an outline of what life might have been at the time. At times the data, which should have taken the form of footnotes, becomes the body of the text. Fortunately, this does not happen often. The "Plague" section is a bit amiss with outstretched consequences of the plague, but is nonetheless revealing: I, for one, learned that there were 3 kinds of plagues, the bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic rather than a single sweeping disease. Aberth contends that the Plague claimed more victims than the standard 1/3 demographic decline figure. All in all there is plenty here for a medievalist to keep themselves entertained. I would also recommend, perhaps, reading this in conjunction w/ the video series written and hosted by Simon Schama "A History of Britain"." - Philip C. Andrews, Amazon .com

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