Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire PDF

Rating: Author: William Rosen ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Download for free medical books PRETITLE Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire POSTTITLE from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror linkThe epic story of the collision between one of nature?s smallest organisms and history?s mightiest empire

During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born.

At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian?s Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.


Direct download links available for PRETITLE Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• File Size: 963 KB
• Print Length: 384 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 014311381X
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 3, 2007)
• Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000QUEHNA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #329,660 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #97 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Communicable Diseases
• #97 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Communicable Diseases

Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire PDF

Great men have changed the world. And so have microbes. And changes fifteen hundred years ago, among ancient societies that are irretrievably lost except to scholars, created contingencies that have made our world what it is, with no way possible to conceive all the "what ifs" that have thereby fallen out to give our current political, religious, and social situation. If you are like me, the history of the sixth century Mediterranean, especially Constantinople, is one vague gray area, but it doesn't have to stay that way. _Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe_ (Viking) is a strange book in many ways. It is not written by an academic with long publishing credentials behind him. William Rosen has publishing credentials, but they are in the business of publishing, where he has been a senior executive. This is his first book as author, and it shows all the enthusiasm of a hobbyist eager to let others know just how interesting is the subject of his particular fascination. It is crammed with religious, military, and political history, along with large doses of epidemiology and bacteriology (to help explain how bubonic plague works) as well as an addendum of entomology (to help explain the equally history-making silkworm). Not every hobbyist could make his obsession interesting, but Rosen's book swarms with so many facts that it is always surprising and never dull.

The backbone of the book is a biography of the Emperor Justinian himself. He was born in a Balkan hill town in 482 CE, but an uncle, a general in the imperial guard, adopted him, took him to Constantinople, and got him an education. Justinian was a hard worker, productive to the point of robbing himself of sleep. He did not pay much attention to his appearance, and he tended to asceticism.

William Rosen's "Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire" is better titled "The Life and Times of Justinian the Great". Although Rosen's work is loaded with endless interesting details
of Justinian's rise to power, love life, geopolitical accomplishments, architectural triumphs and his complex personal relationships, it has a proportionally miniscule amount of information about the plague itself. And while I find the aforementioned information worthwhile, it is not why I purchased the book in the first place.

For example, more actual pages in the book are dedicated to the Hagia Sophia than to the details of the plague. In fact, there is no discussion of the plague until well into the second half of the book (page 170 something)...that's a long way to go before you're introduced to the antagonist. In contrast, by page 98 we are in the midst of a mini-series on the birth, destruction and re-construction of the Hagia Sophia. It indeed is one of the the great churches found on earth and we learn a vast array of details regarding its eccentric designers, the history of the arch, the source of the materials, the craftsmen and artisans involved, the socio-political and religious implications of its creation, the specific details of the piers and buttresses, practical liturgical considerations and so on and so on. This one tangent alone carries more pages in the book than the entire discussion of the title's topic.

Additionally, while there is no doubt regarding the impact of the plague on western civilization, Rosen leaves a huge hole in his proposed conclusion relative to the crushing effects of the Islamic imperialism of the following century.