Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly

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CBR17 Bingo: Rec’d – I picked up this book after a recommendation by the true crime podcast Last Podcast on the Left, which used this book as a source for its series on the Black Death. The impact of the Black Death upon medieval Europe was astounding in its scale, but the effects it had on an individual level can get buried under the sheer number of the dead. In this book, author Kelly skillfully excavates them. The Black Death is one of those things […]

“Faith opened her book in good earnest and the full tide of death flowed everywhere around us.”

The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

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I love when you read two different books on the same events and you immediately pick up on the bias each other has. When I reviewed Padraic X. Scanlan’s Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine, Scanlan held that the most Ireland could possibly blame England for was “misguided politics”; Kelly holds that the political decisions were the least they could be blamed for.Kelly also went far further into Irish history and culture, as well as the emigrant experience upon leaving Ireland, and how […]

“One news came straight huddling on another Of death and death and death”

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly

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(Shown with Black Death the Giant Microbe and Yersinia Pestis, the Oriental Shorthair; yes, I am indeed that sick.) I’ve had a fascination with the Black Death, aka Yersinia Pestis, ever since I took several summer courses at a local university as a child. The professor had two main classes; The Middle Ages, which covered everything from Ladyhawke to the Black Death, and Unsolved Mysteries, which covered everything from Jack the Ripper, to the Romanovs, to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.  I suppose this says a […]

An Entertaining History of the Plague

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death by John Kelly

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The title of John Kelly’s The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death does not suggest an entertaining read, and of course in the particulars of the plague in 14th century Europe there is plenty of somber (and gross) information. But Kelly’s writing style is crisp, fast-moving, and yes, entertaining. When I told my dad the same about the book, I could practically see his eyes roll out of his head over email. But it’s true I tell you! The Great Mortality focuses […]



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