The Mystery of Black Death

The Mystery of Black Death PDF Author: Mayo Clinic Prss
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Plague

Plague PDF Author: Wendy Orent
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451699212
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Plague is a terrifying mystery. In the Middle Ages, it wiped out 40 million people -- 40 percent of the total population in Europe. Seven hundred years earlier, the Justinian Plague destroyed the Byzantine Empire and ushered in the Middle Ages. The plague of London in the seventeenth century killed more than 1,000 people a day. In the early twentieth century, plague again swept Asia, taking the lives of 12 million in India alone. Even more frightening is what it could do to us in the near future. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian scientists created genetically altered, antibiotic-resistant and vaccine-resistant strains of plague that can bypass the human immune system and spread directly from person to person. These weaponized strains still exist, and they could be replicated in almost any laboratory. Wendy Orent's Plague pieces together a fascinating and terrifying historical whodunit. Drawing on the latest research in labs around the world, along with extensive interviews with American and Soviet plague experts, Orent offers nothing less than a biography of a disease. Plague helped bring down the Roman Empire and close the Middle Ages; it has had a dramatic impact on our history, yet we still do not fully understand its own evolution. Orent's retelling of the four great pandemics makes for gripping reading and solves many puzzles. Why did some pandemics jump from person to person, while others relied on insects as carriers? Why are some strains more virulent than others? Orent reveals the key differences among rat-based, prairie dog-based, and marmot-based plague. The marmots of Central Asia, in particular, have long been hosts to the most virulent and frightening form of the disease, a form that can travel around the world in the blink of an eye. From its ability to hide out in the wild, only to spring back into humanity with a terrifying vengeance, to its elusive capacity to develop suddenly greater virulence and transmissibility, plague is a protean nightmare. To make matters worse, Orent's disturbing revelations about the former Soviet bioweapon programs suggest that the nightmare may not be over. Plague is chilling reading at the dawn of a new age of bioterrorism.

In the Wake of the Plague

In the Wake of the Plague PDF Author: Norman F. Cantor
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476797749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The Black Death was the fourteenth century's equivalent of a nuclear war. It wiped out one-third of Europe's population, taking millions of lives. The author draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death as a gripping, intimate narrative.

New Light on the Black Death

New Light on the Black Death PDF Author: M. G. L. Baillie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Exploring new ideas behind the emergence of the bubonic plague

The Black Death and the Transformation of the West

The Black Death and the Transformation of the West PDF Author: David Herlihy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674744233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
In this small book David Herlihy makes subtle and subversive inquiries that challenge historical thinking about the Black Death. Looking beyond the view of the plague as unmitigated catastrophe, Herlihy finds evidence for its role in the advent of new population controls, the establishment of universities, the spread of Christianity, the dissemination of vernacular cultures, and even the rise of nationalism. This book, which displays a distinguished scholar's masterly synthesis of diverse materials, reveals that the Black Death can be considered the cornerstone of the transformation of Europe.

Return of the Black Death

Return of the Black Death PDF Author: Susan Scott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470338997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
If the twenty-first century seems an unlikely stage for the return of a 14th-century killer, the authors of Return of the Black Death argue that the plague, which vanquished half of Europe, has only lain dormant, waiting to emerge again—perhaps, in another form. At the heart of their chilling scenario is their contention that the plague was spread by direct human contact (not from rat fleas) and was, in fact, a virus perhaps similar to AIDS and Ebola. Noting the periodic occurrence of plagues throughout history, the authors predict its inevitable re-emergence sometime in the future, transformed by mass mobility and bioterrorism into an even more devastating killer.

Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague

Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague PDF Author: David K. Randall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A spine-chilling saga of virulent racism, human folly, and the ultimate triumph of scientific progress. For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn’t noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin—a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong’s tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide. To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable—or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk. In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread—the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

Black Death

Black Death PDF Author: Robert S. Gottfried
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439118469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A fascinating work of detective history, The Black Death traces the causes and far-reaching consequences of this infamous outbreak of plague that spread across the continent of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Drawing on sources as diverse as monastic manuscripts and dendrochronological studies (which measure growth rings in trees), historian Robert S. Gottfried demonstrates how a bacillus transmitted by rat fleas brought on an ecological reign of terror -- killing one European in three, wiping out entire villages and towns, and rocking the foundation of medieval society and civilization.

The Barbary Plague

The Barbary Plague PDF Author: Marilyn Chase
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375757082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporter Marilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonic plague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller that resonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of the city’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects on public health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how one city triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges.

The Mystery of Black Death

The Mystery of Black Death PDF Author: Mayo Clinic Prss
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Black Death

The Black Death PDF Author: Rob Lloyd Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781409581031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
A gripping account of how a deadly plague swept across the world in the 14th century, killing almost half of the population. Discover how the Black Death reached Europe, the disease's terrifying symptoms, the desperate efforts to prevent it from spreading, and the devastating effects it had on life and society in the Middle Ages and beyond. Atmospheric illustrations by Daniele Dickman reveal the chaos, fear and confusion that gripped a continent ravaged by the Black Death. Part of the successful Young Reading series from Usborne's Reading Programme, this is a new title aimed at children whose reading ability and confidence allows them to tackle longer and more complex stories.