In this New York Times best-seller, Norman F. Cantor digs through the medical evidence and concludes that the Black Death of the 14th century was probably two diseases at once: bubonic plague and anthrax. He shows how these diseases affected the masses as well as individuals, and thus altered history. Concise, informative, and touched with dark humor, this book is a startlingly fresh view of a frightening epidemic.

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin...

"With a mix of sidebars, illustrations, photos, and graphic panels, this book uncovers the hidden truths about history's pandemics, from the Black Death to COVID-19"--

"The deadly outbreak of plague known as the Great Mortality, which struck Europe in the mid 1300s and raged for four centuries, wiped out more than 25 million people in the course of just two years. With its vicious onslaught, life changed for millions of people almost instantaneously. Deadly pandemics have always been a part of life, from the Great Mortality of the Middle Ages, to the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, to the eruption of COVID-19...

The people of fourteenth-century Florence, Italy, starving after years of bad weather and natural disasters, now face the Black Plague but twelve-year-old Maria is determined to survive. Includes historical note, glossary, and discussion questions.