San Antonio College Library

Alternate history based on a world where the Black Death killed most of the population of Christian Europe, China, India, and the Middle East are dominant regions, and Islam and Buddhism the dominant religions.

The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, takingmillion lives. And yet, most of what we know about it is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren - the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the awful end by respiratory failure - are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was and how it made history remain shrouded in...

The Black Death was the greatest and most devastating ecological disaster of the middle ages. As well as a high mortality rate, the epidemic affected many aspects of society. This program examines its impact on: religion, feudalism, farming, urban life, the arts, and minorities in Europe; the economic and political consequences of the disease in Asia; and the socio-economic impacts in North Africa and the Middle East. Filled with unique examples,...

Until 1348, people in Sienna and Florence enjoyed the richest, safest, and most comfortable lives in their history. But almost overnight, their certainty of life-and even any hope of a good death-was gone. This program assesses the aftermath of the ferocious damage unleashed by the bubonic plague on the two city-states. Historians Alexander Nagel and Nicholas Terpstra, from the University of Toronto, and professional artisans-chief among them, sculptor...

"The many local studies on the Black Death published in a variety of languages and scholarly papers have for the first time been systematically collected and thoroughly analysed. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented...

Did the first outbreaks occur in China or in the Caspian Sea? Experts still argue. But how did the plague actually spread? After many controversies, it seems that the rat flea was the major carrier of this disease.

"This is a study of rural social structure in the English county of Essex between 1350 and 1525. It seeks to understand how, in the population collapse after the Black Death (1348-1349), a particular economic environment affected ordinary people's lives in the areas of migration, marriage and employment, and also contributed to patterns of religious nonconformity, agrarian riots and unrest, and even rural housing. The period under scrutiny is often...

"Relying on rich literary and historical sources John Aberth brings this period to life. Taking his themes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he describes how the Great Famine and Black Death swept away nearly half of Europe's population, while the royal houses of England and France were engaged in a Hundred Years War that meant perpetual political strife. Above all loomed the specter of Death, ever present and constantly feared." "Throughout...