I've been waiting for someone to write a comprehensive, up-to-date history of the Black Death for years, and if that were all Professor Thomas Asbridge did with his new book The Black Death: A Global History, it would be a monumental achievement. Yet he's also succeeded in capturing the essence of an age in which societies were being crushed under the weight of mass death, the experiences of those who lived through it, and the plague's impact on the world that followed. A delightful conversation with one of the best medieval historians working today.

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