Rosen - Justinians Flea

PENGUIN BOOKS

JUSTINIANS FLEA

William Rosen was a senior executive at Macmillan and Simon & Schuster publishing houses for more than twenty-five years. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Justinians Flea is his first book.

Praise for Justinians Flea

This is a remarkable book; the polymath author expatiates on subjects as varied as architecture, theology, jurisprudence, the art of war, and, of course, biology, as well as happily imparting the juiciest bits of imperial gossip. , Bacterium, begins with a detailed account of the nature of the plague, traces its terrible spread across ancient Europe, and provides visceral descriptions of the ravaged Constantinople, 5,000 citizens dying every day. The end of the world, thanks to a flea.

Talha Burki, The Lancet

This is a very engaging, lively, and entertaining text that presents the story of the plague almost as a mystery tour. An impressively wide-ranging book covering epidemiology, medical history, economics, agricultural history, evolution, and architecture. Rosen marshals information from history, zoology, genetics, complexity theory, meteorology, and evolutionary history to present a fascinating account of the interrelationships between fleas, rats, bacteria, climate, and food supply. Worth reading for the lively accounts of battle scenes and the movement of armies; sympathetic descriptions of early Christian debates about the nature of God and Christ alongside critiques of intelligent design; discussions of the structure of marble; explanations of the effects of bacteria on a fleas stomach and appetite, and, ultimately, the effect all this had on an empire.

Helen Blackman, The Journal of the American Medical Association

Rosens knowledge of these events is remarkable. His explanations of the interaction of Y. pestis with the immune system and of bacterial pathogenesis provide insight into a killer that shaped history. Justinians Flea is a well-researched book that is also a pleasure to read, and I enthusiastically recommend it.

Raymond J. Dattwyler, M.D., The New England Journal of Medicine

Dont charge William Rosen with lack of ambition. [In] this widest of wide-ranging books, he leaves no cause unconsidered and eloquently connects a fleas bite 1,465 years ago with the world as it is today.

Jay Hancock, The Baltimore Sun

Rosen writes what might be called champagne prose: it slips down quick and easy but carries a punch. He covers not just the centers but the extremities of knowledge: this book touches on gravity fields, early modern microscopes, late Roman cavalry tactics, and load patterns in the Hagia Sophia. Fascinating.

Simon Young, The Telegraph

Rigorous, highly informative history written with passion, panache and an appealing bit of attitude.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Rosens study comes very close to being a truly great work of history. His eloquence, wit, narrative skill, learning and (one dares to add) compassion, hoist this book above the miasma of its deeply somber subject and make it, strangely, a joy.

Murrough OBrien, The Independent

This ambitious and learned book is destined to be a librarians nightmare. How on earth to categorize it? Justinians Flea is, among other things, a work of political, military, medical and cultural history. Scholars may quibble with certain particulars but ordinary readers will be swept along by the strong current of Mr. Rosens good-natured erudition.

The Economist

In this eccentric and erudite book, in which a flea looms as large as an emperor, Rosen sets out to establish the forces that transformed the Mediterranean world of late antiquity into medieval Europe. Justinians Flea is a massively ambitious work. [An] impressive study of the bubonic plague and its impact on history.

Ian Pindar, The Guardian (London)

Rosen absorbingly narrates the story of how the Byzantine Empire encountered the dangerous Y. pestis in A.D. 542 and suffered a bubonic plague pandemic foreshadowing its more famous successor eight centuries later. Readers of Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamonds grand narratives, will find this a welcome addendum.

Publishers Weekly

An engrossing and insightful account of one of the most important but little known medical disasters in human history.

John Kelly, author of The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

We live at a time when the popes quotation of a Byzantine emperor can cause an international incident. William Rosens fascinating new book offers a timely portrait of the greatest Byzantine emperor of them alland explains, in compelling detail, how the golden age of Constantinople was blotted out by a catastrophe as momentous as any in history.

Tom Holland, author of Persian Fire

Justinians Flea is narrative history writing at its best. Breathtaking in its scope, the book presents a confident mix of history, science, architecture, theology, military strategy, law, engineering and medicine to tell the story of how plague transformed the classical world and gave birth to medieval Europe. William Rosens canvas stretches from China to Spain, and Britain to Arabia, and his intriguing cast of characters includes emperors, priests, soldiers, and engineers as well as rats, fleas, and silkworms. Justinians Flea transforms our understanding of many key events in the history of the last two thousand years, from the decline of Rome to the rise of Islam and beyond.

Karl Sabbagh, author of The Riemann Hypothesis: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics and Skyscraper: The Making of a Building

William Rosen doesnt just give us the most believable, the most human and the most fully rounded Justinian ever. He also conjures up a vivid picture of the age, in a compelling style that makes his weighty learning light.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium and Civilizations

J USTINIANS F LEA

THE FIRST GREAT PLAGUE
AND THE END OF
THE ROMAN EMPIRE

WILLIAM ROSEN

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First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2007

Published in Penguin Books 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright William Rosen, 2007

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-1-101-20242-5

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Printed in the United States of America

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