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Return of the Black Death: The World's Greatest Serial Killer by: Susan Scott, Christopher Duncan

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Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Release date: 20th May, 2005
Media: Paperback

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Average rating - (more reviews)

Rating: - Repeats itself a bit

I found this a wee bit disappointing.
Some great accounts of the plague from public records, yes.
But at the end of the book, we never really had an explanation of why some survived and others didn't, whether it could come back or any clarity of thought on what the links could be to other diseases.
I suspect the authors did not manage to get an interview with an expert in the field to shed some light on these matters. Perhaps they could do with a later edition to correct this failing.

Rating: - Dissapointing

The black death usually came to a town via a stranger, incubation was 37 days whereby half the population died and many more fled in panic to neighbouring towns. Good premise, but repeat this statement for 128 pages and you essentially have the first part of the book which charts the spread across europe. You get very sick of reading the same thing happen over and over again.
Would you like to know why 50% of people survive? Good so would I. The authors promise to tell you time and time again and the answer comes very unsatisfactorily at the end of the book. In between there are some o level biology explanations of how diseases spread and how the black death has something to do with Europeans not getting aids as easily as Africans.
I found it a frustrating and repetitive read. If you already know a little about the black death then you will not know much more at the end of it. If you know nothing then this book might just be palatable.

Rating: - Fascinating read, someone needs to re-write the history books!

This is compelling reading and undeniably a better explanation for 'the plague'. However if it is true, history should be re-written and the world health organisation needs to sit up and take notice as has serious implications for the future

Rating: - Important and interesting but flawed

This is in historical point of huge interest and potential importance. The idea that bubonic plague caused the Black Death is one that refuses to die, despite the clear and obvious (to anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge and understanding of the biology of bubonic plague)facts. This analysis should absolutely nail down the argument. Possibly it does but it won't convince a lot of historians. Not because they aren't right, but because they have somewhat fluffed the writing of this book.

The crux of it is that the introduction is overlong and the actual meat of the argument is skated over. If they are to overturn a century of accepted 'fact' they will need to set out their points in far more detail. They clearly feel that their argument is unassailable and doesn't need to be clearly made so they make it in a few short, punchy paragraphs. They may be right but this approach leaves them open to all sorts of come-back and fails to directly address many of the issues.

I'll get my criticism out of the way first. They dismiss bubonic plague too lightly. The main weakness of their position is that they cite far too few sources to adequately knock it down. Like many non-historians they only quote sources which agree with them and don't bother to actually tackle and knock down those which don't. The best example of this is rats. One scientist reports there were no rats in rural Medieval England. I don't doubt that this is true, but they have not given space to counter-argument to show why this is the correct interpretation. They only give one specific reason, that rat-proof dove-cotes did not exist and then state that these came into use when brown rats moved in. What about black rats the critics will cry. They do the same with the purported DNA evidence of yersina pestis in france. Again as amateurs do they try to conclusively knock down one expert with another of their own. I have no reason to trust their expert above the one claiming to have found plague. They must be much more definitive. They dismiss the French archaeological investigations far too lightly. This badly undermines their argument. It reads as sloppy and amateur stuff.

They deal with some crucial issues in a throwaway manner. They don't give adequate space to pneumonic plague. The answer given to doubters is 'it was spread person-to-person as pneumonic plague'. They dismiss it out of hand without really spelling out the biology and why pneumonic plague does not exist without bubonic. This is crucial and desperately needed solid scientific references. Likewise the human flea. they say it could not have passed on the disease but give no indication of why not. These two flaws alone give the pro-bubonic plague lobby the crack they need to shatter the whole thing.

Their whole section on bubonic plague needs much more fleshing out. They say it can't be bubonic plague as it spreads slowly then in the next section describe an outbreak of bubonic plague spreading across continents. They are just not specific enough about how slow it is, a few throwaway examples with no references don't wash. They completely fail to use the Marseilles Plague of 1722 to knock down bubonic plague. they feint at describing why the old Black Death precautions failed to work but don't flesh it out with explanations, statistics, etc.

Having said all that this is a very powerful work. The evidence they have is clearly absolutely conclusive. Their research has been extremely thorough and their credentials are unimpeachable. They should have got a 'proper' historian to advise them on how to set it out and set out argument. They write in that scientific style which I deeply dislike and which is too quick and sketchy, never really setting out their arguments in depth and ensuring that they preempt any counter-argument. Instead of saying 'here's my full argument' they say 'here is an outline of my argument, now go and replicate it', science not history on a historical topic for which a historical approach is needed as there is no real actual scientific evidence to go on.

Their conclusion is inescapable and terrifying. Black Death was not and could not have been bubonic plague. Any person with common sense can see this. They sadly missed the opportunity to nail this down once and for all. Excellent ideas and research, poorly set out. This review sounds far more negative than I want to be! It's a good book, fascinating and well-prepared. I am criticising because I think it is a shame that they let the argument slip through their fingers somewhat, not because they are wrong but because they get the writing a bit wrong. Better editing or more historical input would have turned this into an absolute classic.

Rating: - No living happily ever after

"Compelling", a quote attributed to New Scientist says prominently on the cover. And it is. In both senses. In the compelling-evidence sense and in the compelled-to-read-on sense. This is a very accessible and a very gripping marriage of science and history. It's very neatly ordered with each point flowing well from the one before and linking in nicely to the one that follows. There's very little confusing digression and not too much scientific terminology. It's obviously written for the interested lay person, and all the better for it. The only thing that I would draw attention to, and lament quietly, is the lack of illustrations. I would have liked some 'ye olde' woodcuts, medieval art and period maps. Talking of maps, they were VERY basic. Looks like the authors knocked them up themselves one night as an OHP slide! And lastly, but by no means least, THERE IS NO HAPPY ENDING. Towards the end of the book I was reading on and on about all these apocalyptic scenarios and mankind's being at the mercy of a future emergent haemorrhagic virus and I was expecting some good news to arrive at any minute. It never did. Looks like we're living on borrowed time. I'm off to buy some surgical masks now.

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