The Second Great Mortality

1436. Sir Richard de Colleville and his hunting party are viciously attacked by a stranger bearing the unmistakable signs of Plague. Fear gives way to unspeakable horror once the true nature of this Pestilence is revealed. The Second Great Mortality offers a fresh take on the modern zombie story by taking the reader back to Medieval England.

A compelling history of the Black Death that scoured Europe in the mid-14th century killing 25 million people. It was one of the worst human disasters in history.

In the year 1436 Sir Richard de Colleville must protect his family, villagers, and tenants from the consequences of a worse-than-deadly varietry of the plague.

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis. Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of death. MORTALITY is the exemplary story of one man's refusal to cower in the face of the unknown, as well as a searching look at the human predicament. Crisp and vivid, veined throughout with penetrating intelligence, Hitchens's testament is a courageous and lucid work of literature, an affirmation of the dignity and worth of man.

This new text offers a wealth of documentary material focused on the initial outbreak of the plague that ravaged the world in the 14th century. A comprehensive introduction providing background on the origins and spread of the Black Death is followed by nearly 50 documents covering the responses of medical practitioners; the social and economic impact; religious responses. Each chapter has an introduction that summarizes the issues explored in the documents and headnotes to provide additional background material. The book contains documents from many countries - including Muslim and Byzantine sources - to give students a variety of perspectives on this devastating illness and its consequences.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastestgrowing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian citystate’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory. #2 Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time. #3 The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China. #4 The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Feodosiya, a city on the eastern coast of the Crimea, was a Genoese port that was one of the fastest-growing in the medieval world. The city was built as a monument to the Italian city-state’s wealth, virtue, piety, and imperial glory. #2 Between 1250 and 1350, the medieval world experienced an early burst of globalization, and Caffa was perfectly situated to take advantage of it. The port city doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in size between 1250 and 1340, and its population quadrupled a second, third, and fourth time. #3 The Genoese, who were much closer to Asia than de’ Mussis and Heyligen, probably heard rumors about the disasters, but they faced so many immediate dangers in Caffa that they could not have had much time to worry about events in faraway India or China. #4 The Black Death first spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe, and then to China. It seems that the pestilence originated in inner Asia, and spread westward to the Middle East and Europe along the international trade routes.