These wide-ranging implications have also been of interest to the military community, which has used the event to try to understand human response to catastrophe. I found myself enthralled by these passages, and deeply curious about this type of military research, in spite of the fact that a plague pandemic may not be a perfect model for nuclear disaster:
The fear of contagion makes the psychology of plague different from the psychology of war. In plague, fear acts as a solvent on human relationships; it makes everyone an enemy and everyone an isolate. In plague, every man becomes an island — a small, haunted island of suspicion, fear, and despair.By the time Kelly closes the book with the plague's retreat, I felt as though I had a much better understanding of my world. I had deepened my knowledge about medieval Europe and this specific plague outbreak, to be sure, but because of the book's humanity, I felt that I better understood not only history and science, but the human condition itself. The Great Mortality is a rarely dense, often compellingly readable book that leaves you feeling both wiser and exponentially more curious about the world.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!