Norman F. Cantor: In the Wake of the Plague

By MARGIE THOMSON

You've read Geraldine Brooks' wonderful novel about the plague, Year of Wonders, and had your interest piqued. Well here, right on cue, is a learned yet accessible history of the Black Death and its impact on Europe and England.

Cantor, an emeritus professor of history at York University, is interested not just in the spread of the disease, or its causes, but in the sociology of the disease, and the changes it wrought on European culture. He postulates that the plague caused the literal demise of the old order and opened the way for new, more scientific thinking.

Simon & Schuster

$29.95