The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research
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The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research
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Narrated by:
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Dorsey Armstrong
About this listen
The world has been fundamentally changed by the shock and devastation of a 21st century pandemic. COVID-19 has claimed six million lives; we process a daily deluge of often conflicting and/or overwhelming information; and humanity has no way of knowing when this collective trauma will finally end. Will our lives ever be the same again? It seems not.
Now, try to imagine the plague that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages and beyond: more than 25 million dead. Almost 400 years of outbreaks caused by a bacterium that would not be identified until the 19th century. The mortality rate was close to 85%, with as much as 70% of the population wiped out in some locations. Superstition was pervasive, and medical practices were frequently ineffective and harmful. What caused this tragedy, and what could have been done about it? For years, we thought we knew … but we often had it wrong.
In The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research, celebrated medievalist Dorsey Armstrong shares the fascinating new story of this old pandemic—revealed by dedicated researchers working with 21st-century technologies and a knowledge of language and history that now provide input from all geographic areas of the medieval world. In seven engaging lectures, Professor Armstrong corrects explanations of the pandemic that are now known to be inaccurate and offers a more robust description of plague biology than has ever been known. COVID-19 isn’t likely to be humanity’s last experience with a zoonotic disease, so what can we learn now from these two pandemics that could help us in the future?
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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What listeners say about The Black Death: New Lessons from Recent Research
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tomos Williams
- 24-09-23
Great book
Wonderful review of the Black Death. Interesting contrast and comparison to the Covid-19 pandemic. Well worth a listen.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Paul Edwards
- 02-06-23
Great
Great series & very informative, really interesting the way the comparisons were made between the Black Death & Covid with the potential for the human future brought to a startling reality.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Ro Smith
- 21-04-24
Fantastic, informative, and clear
How amazing to find not just her original lecture series, but this update a few years later! It is the mark of a true scholar to be not only willing, but excited and eager to correct themselves when new evidence comes to light, and she does it with grace.
My one word of caution would be that she draws parallels to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and while I am very grateful to her for acknowledging this, it can't help but be retraumatising, especially for me as someone with Long COVID. I wish I could share her optimism about the change she hopes will be generated, but just in the 2 years since this was published, things have become darker again, with overwhelming pressure to leave the disabled behind in order to force everyone back to work and office environments that aren't safe. But I don't really fault her for her analysis, which is balanced and caveated. It's just hard for all of us to reflect on these times.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Virginia
- 17-07-24
Clear and informative
I like subject matter given as a lecture style, no irritating music interludes or different voices - it was clear, informative and fascinating.
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- Tiddlypoo
- 20-08-23
Great new lesson lectures
I love that the lectures have been revisited with updates post covid 19. The lectures are interesting and informative.
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- KK
- 29-05-23
Excellent, Very Informative
I am a fan of the Great Courses and of Dorsey Armstrong's lectures, This update (Not as long as most of the full lecture courses) comes from soon after the peak of the Covid pandemic, to which connections are drawn. It's really interesting to learn how historical research in the last few years has added to our understanding of The Black Death and in some cases even changed what historians thought they knew.
I couldn't download the PDF though.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-08-23
Brilliant - with lively and accessible reading
I thoroughly enjoyed this even though it is scholarly Very good presentation style with humour. Dorsey Adams addresses the listener as a friend.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 02-08-23
Terrible.
Filled with conjecture and guesses. It’s amazing we can tell ourselves these stories. Sorry, one star from me.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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- Just a reader
- 31-08-23
Ahistorical interpretations, already dated
I am not very impressed with this follow up. The reason for this is twofold:
01: Too much focus on COVID instead of the actual new plague-research.
02; The assumption that the USA is 'the world' and political activism weaved in the lectures.
So in my eyes, this is not so much a history course, but an already dated (well-informed) opinion piece.
I am very left wing, from Europe, and absolutely pro-mask and everything, So not someone who is just an anti vaxxer and against 'everything' because of that. But Armstrong draws conclusions and paints scenarios that are solely based on the political mess in the USA. She does not keep her distance to the past, and presents ahistorical conclusions because of that.
She should know better. In quite a few of these lectures she states that she got a LOT wrong in her previous course on this topic. Which is normal; science and historical research thrives on evolving ideas. But instead of learning from that, she once again states new things as 'facts'. They are almost all based on her USA-centric experience with COVID. Many of them are already dated, even just one year later.
I expected a series on plague research, but instead I got a bunch of COVID lectures. If you cut away that chaff, only about half of these lectures are interesting. However, If you cut away the info already gleaned from the first series, you just get 10% of new stuff. Not worth the listening time or the credit, in my opinion.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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- Christopher
- 04-08-24
A rushed job
A rushed job to meet a marketing opportunity as this series came out during the covid 19 pandemic. The lecturer cannot make up her mind whether she's talking to people who listened to the first series or new listeners who don't have the foundations and the result is that she fails both. Some of the material is very interesting and would deserve 3 stars. But the comparison between covid and the plague is inaccurate and extremely irritating.
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