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| | Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Review: The Great Mortality by John Kelly |
 | | As John Kelly describes, in a compellingly vivid moment-to-moment account, a virulent form of plague bacillus swept out of Asia across China, the Middle East and Europe, killing from a third to a half of the population. |
 | | Like the trail of infection itself, Kelly's prose moves with brushfire speed, leaping over the medieval map, painting the chain of outbreaks with a Goya-like hard-edgedness, and a mordant, modern eye for the stupidities and cruelties of the time. |
 | | Although Kelly is cautious in his conclusions, he makes it easy to see why this sea-change - part of a criticalness already in the air of the Middle Ages, but latent - took place. |
| books.guardian.co.uk /reviews/history/0,6121,1455357,00.html (1376 words) |
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