Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location, and Regional Growth

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This book provides the first unifying analysis of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households. Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs. The main focus of the analysis is on cities, but it also explores the formation of other agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions.

Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location and Regional Growth [A book review from: Regional Science and Urban Economics]

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Economics of Agglomeration: Cities, Industrial Location and Regional Growth [A book review from: Regional Science and Urban Economics]
D. Pines
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Elsevier | By Publisher | e-Docs | Formats | Books
ASIN: B000RR543E

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Regional Science and Urban Economics, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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In 1987 a new retirement system, called the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), was introduced for federal civil service personnel. Some observers have hypothesized that FERS would alter the retirement and separation outcomes produced by FERS' pre

Book Description

According to estimates of the World Health Organization, 80% of the world population is primarily reliant on such traditional methods of healing as medicinal plants. This timely text assesses 25 common plants from several countries, providing practical and evidence-based recommendations for their application.

This book essential for all practitioners working in developing countries who must understand the characteristics of medicinal plants.

Customer Reviews:

medicinal plants in tropical countries.......2005-08-06

I included a review when I returned this book.

It is grossly overpriced for the amount of info included. Thought it would have tons of info for the high price, but it only covered about 24 plants. It was more a text book, than a book for the lay herbalist.

It would help if Amazon would list # of pages, photos, drawings, etc. for all the books you sell.

Thanks

PRESERVATION OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES BY RADIATION

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PRESERVATION OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES BY RADIATION
Especially In The Tropics... Panel On Preservation Of Fruit and Vegetables by Radiation
Manufacturer: International Atomic Energy Agency
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000W9CGYM

Summary Report, Conference on Research & Development of Vegetables in the Tropics

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Summary Report, Conference on Research & Development of Vegetables in the Tropics

Manufacturer: Winrock International Institute for Agricultu
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0933595042

Book Description

Few people have made greater contributions to protecting and improving the environment than the scientist, teacher, activist Dr. Barry Commoner. For half a century, Dr. Commoner has been an international leader in the environmental movement. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, a symposium was held at which invited speakers discussed his contributions to a wide range of environmental issues. This book, collecting many of the invited papers, provides fascinating insights into the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists and social activists. Chapters contributed by other activists, scientists, and scholars including Ralph Nader, Tony Mazzocchi and Peter Montague cover many of Dr. Commoner's major contributions. In the final chapter Dr. Commoner concludes: "We, who are environmental advocates, must find a way—for the sake of the planet and the people who live on it—to join a historic mission to end poverty wherever it exists. That is what is yet to be done."

Since the 1950's, Barry Commoner has played a pivotal role in nearly every important phase of the environmental movement, including opposition to nuclear weapons testing in the 1950's, the science information movement of the 1960's, the energy debates of the 1970's, and on through pioneering research on organic farming, recycling, and toxic chemical substitution in recent years. This book is an invaluable guide, not only to Dr. Commoner's life and work, but also to the entire history of the modern environmental movement.

Customer Reviews:

Science and Social Action.......2001-04-12

This is an excellent collection -- a festschrift at Barry Commoner's 80th birthday. It includes contributions from Italy on Commoner's important role there in "greening" the left, as well as an article on his early nuclear work in St. Louis. Environmentalists, labor, and academic points of view -- and points of appreciation -- are all evident. An important book about an important figure in science and social action.

Wide Receiver Play: Fundamentals and Techniques
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Helped me alot......

Wide Receiver Play: Fundamentals and Techniques
Ron Jenkins
Manufacturer: Coaches Choice Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Football (American) | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
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101 Receiver Drills

The Complete Handbook of Coaching Wide Receivers: The Difference Is the Details

Quarterback Play: Fundamentals and Techniques

101 Defensive Back Drills

Coaching the Defensive Secondary: By the Experts

ASIN: 158518652X

Book Description

An informative and easy-to-understand instructional tool for developing and improving the skill of the wide receiver. Provides a thorough review of the techniques, mechanics, and thought processes needed to refine and improve wide receiver play at any skill level. Covers wide receiver fundamentals (stance, vertical push, catching the football), pass-route release, breaks and separation, individual pass routes vs. various coverages, base pass routes and techniques, techniques vs. bump-and-run defenders, advanced moves (stick and double-stick, mid-stem, single- and double-step, etc.), running counter routes (quick hitch and go, slant and go, the smash, etc.), shifting and going in motion, wide receiver blocking, contingency plans for wide receivers and much more. Dozens of diagrams and illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Helped me alot.............2003-03-15

My dad bought the book for me. The best part was the seam and burst releases. The bump and run stuff was great also. My coach says I am better and he uses the stuff in the book now..

Product Description

The Yamaha Guide To Sound Systems For Worship is written to assist in the design, purchase, and operation of a sound system. It provides the basic information on sound systems that is most needed by ministers, members of Boards of Trustees and worship and music committees, interested members of congregations, and even employees of musical instrument dealers that sell sound systems. To be of greatest value to all, it is written to be both nondenominational and non-brand-name.

Customer Reviews:

Still the best book available on church sound so far..........2007-07-29

I am an acoustical and systems design consultant who specializes in the design and functional rehabilitation of worship facilities. I recently re-read this book as part of a survey of available literature to recommend to the church staff members and volunteers I routinely train in technical operations.

Simply put, virtually all of the information in this well-written book by knowledgeable authors is of a fundamental nature. The misconceptions many people have about these basic technical principles, along with various types of moral failures, are the cause of most of the bad sound we encounter in our daily lives. In my view, the absence of present-day fad products only helps to maintain focus of the book on serving the needs of the novice church sound operator. One exception is probably to be found in the area of stage monitoring, where the explosion in the availability of in-ear monitoring and personal mixing systems has revolutionized the quality of sound that can be attained by amateur musicians. A few other developments, such as high-quality sub-miniature microphones for speech and close instrument pickup, and the superior tools now available to the audio system designer for measurement and prediction, would also be worthwhile to mention in an updated edition. It is probably best not to spend too much time on such things as loudspeakers, DSP, and room acoustical devices, even though their development continues at a brisk pace, since the selection of these technologies is a design-level task. To that end, one of the ways in which this book is smarter than most on church audio is that it helps the novice to gain a sense of what is and *is not* a user-level decision or adjustment, and what tasks should be performed by audio professionals at either the technician/installer, or designer, levels. These are some of the most important concepts for any audio practitioner, facility manager, organizational leader, or performing artist to be aware of.

Apart from ephemeral changes in recording media, about the only truly out-of-date information in this book is the suggestion that monophonic, central-cluster loudspeaker systems are appropriate for music-intensive churches. For the most authoritative summary of this topic, see Jim Brown's AES preprint #5666.

Finally, this book contains a useful bibliography, although its list of manufacturers should perhaps be replaced with a list of journals and magazines, training organizations, and web resources. As it is, it is the best available starting point for the church sound operator, and should be combined with Curt Taipale's "The Heart of Technical Excellence" in order to gain the best insight available from a book on the role and needs of church technical staff and volunteers. Happy reading!

New to Sound Systems in Church........2006-11-14

This book was excellent in covering sound systems for church and other applications. It discussed all aspects of audio operations both basic and advanced. While not a substitute for a lot of OJT and real involement, it helped me to understand how things worked and why you do things the way you do.

Review on "Sound Systems for Worship.".......2006-09-10

I scanned this book after buying it. I definetely plan on reading this. It is a very useful book. True, it has a lot of information that goes over my head because I've never had classes in communications electronics, for one thing. But it looks very useful for my music career in the near future.

Guide to Sound Systems for Worship.......2006-08-05

I am just learning how to run a mixing board and set up mics for worship

I found this book to be a great help in learning the basics yet it not written too low

I purchased 4 books all at the same time and this is the best of the 4

PS: after the fact this is the book that 2 professionals recommended

Valuable Church Sound Resource.......2006-07-17

This book provides just about everything you would want to know about church sound systems. It may be a bit below a true Sound Engineer, but for the rest of us it is great. It doesn't cover all products but the general knowledge is there and for all but the pure novices it can be made to fit just about any product. It also makes a great reference book to keep on the shelf for thoses times things go wrong.

Sound made simple: A basic guide to audio system operation in houses of worship

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Sound made simple: A basic guide to audio system operation in houses of worship
Charles M Walthall
Manufacturer: s.n
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Applied | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006F5SIS

Book Description

Unique, sensational and shocking, this revelatory book provides, for the first time, a complete Europe-wide history of the Black Death. The author's painstakingly comprehensive research throws fresh light on the nature of the disease, its origin, its spread, on an almost day-to-day basis, across Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa, its mortality rate and its impact on history. These latter two aspects are of central importance here, for it is demonstrated that the plague's death rates have consistently been under-estimated and that they were in fact much higher, making the disease's long-term effects on history even more profound. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.

Customer Reviews:

Black Death.......2007-04-28

Read this for graduate history course in medieval history.
Ole Benedictow's book is the most comprehensive look at the Black Death 1346-1353. Several types of plague. 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse Pestilence, War, Famine, Death. Some say it wasn't plague because it isn't like today, but it probably mutated. Once you have it and survive, you are immune from it. Death rate 40-60% 1300, 70 million in Europe, 1360 36 million. 1348 Florence death rate at 70%. Septicemia plague affects circulation high fever dead in 36 hours. Lancing the boils killed you. Tale of 3 dead and 3 living in art shows up often. Transi tombs have effigies of toads and worms on their face. Number of dead get so high they burn them. 1660 last major outbreak in London. Flagulents self flogging to be Christ like. Predecessors are Disciplinati from Perugia, 1200. They take it a step further flagulenents have notion that they are taking on the cities sins like Christ like beings. Better to pay them than to got to confession of priest. Germany has lots of Flagugents. They are denounced as heretics, and townspeople start to hate them. They disappear around 1349. In 14th century people think you can get plague by looking at a victim. Vapors theory as well. Clement VI tries to save Jews from persecution. He has fires around him to keep plague away. Religion is disrupted clergy is heavily hit by plague. Replacement clergy not as smart and are dishonest.

Plague traveled 60km a day by sea route, 2km a day by land. Flea can live 1 month without host. Pneumonic form can spread 12 feet from sneeze.

Clinical features
Bubonic plague becomes evident three to seven days after the infection. Initial symptoms are chills, fever, diarrhea, headaches, and the swelling of the infected lymph nodes, as the bacteria replicate there. If untreated, the rate of mortality for bubonic plague is 40%-70%.

In septicemic plague, there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin. There are bite-like bumps on the skin, commonly red and sometimes white in the center. Untreated septicemic plague is universally 100% fatal. People who die from this form of plague often die on the same day symptoms first appear. The pneumonic plague infects the lungs, and with that infection comes the possibility of person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is usually between two and four days, but can be as little as a few hours. The initial symptoms, of headache, weakness, and coughing with hemoptysis, are indistinguishable from other respiratory illnesses. Without diagnosis and treatment, the infection can be fatal in one to six days; mortality in untreated cases may be as high as 90%-100%. Bubonic plague is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease plague, which is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis. The epidemiological use of the term plague is currently applied to bacterial infections that cause buboes, although historically the medical use of the term plague was applied to pandemic infections generally. Plague is primarily a disease of rodents. Infection most often occurs when a person is bitten by a rat or flea that has fed on an infected rodent. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it is unable to satisfy its hunger. During the feeding process, blood cannot flow into the blocked stomach, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The Bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Any serious outbreak of plague is usually started by other disease outbreaks in rodents, or some other crash in the rodent population. During these outbreaks, infected fleas that have lost their normal hosts seek other sources of blood.

The Black Death, or Black Plague, was the most devastating pandemic in human history. It began in southwestern Asia and spread to Europe by the late 1340s, where it received its name Black Death. The total number of deaths worldwide from the pandemic are estimated at least 75 million people. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population.

The initial fourteenth-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the 'Black Death'. It has been popularly thought that the name came from a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in which sufferers' skin would blacken due to subdermal hemorrhages. However, the term refers in fact to the figurative sense of "black" (glum, lugubrious or dreadful). Because the Black Death was, according to historical accounts, characterised by buboes (swellings in the groin), like the late 19th century Asian Bubonic plague, scientists and historians assumed at the beginning of the twentieth century that the Black Death was an outbreak of the same disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas with the help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus).

Pattern of the pandemic
The plague disease, caused by Yersinia pestis, is endemic in populations of ground rodents in central Asia, but it is not entirely clear where the fourteenth-century pandemic started. The most popular theory places the first cases in the steppes of Central Asia, though some speculate that it originated around northern India. From there it was carried east and west by Mongol armies and traders making use of the opportunities offered by the Mongol Peace (a guarantee of free passage within the Mongol Empire) along the Silk Road, and was first exposed to Europe at the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea from which it spread to Sicily and on to the rest of Europe. Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several pre-existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death. A devastating civil war in China between the established Chinese population and the Mongol hordes raged between 1205 and 1353. This war disrupted farming and trading patterns, and led to episodes of widespread famine. A so-called "Little Ice Age" had begun at the end of the thirteenth century. The disastrous weather reached a peak in the first half of the fourteenth century with severe results worldwide.

In the years 1315 to 1322, a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck all of Northern Europe. Food shortages and skyrocketing prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay, and consequently livestock were all in short supply --and their scarcity resulted in hunger and malnutrition. The result was a mounting human vulnerability to disease, due to weakened immune systems. The European economy entered a vicious circle in which hunger and chronic, low-level debilitating disease reduced the productivity of laborers, and so the grain output suffered, causing the grain prices to increase. The famine was self-perpetuating, affecting life in places like Flanders and Burgundy as much as the Black Death was later to affect all of Europe. A typhoid epidemic was to be a predictor of the coming disaster. Many thousands died in populated urban centres, most significantly Ypres. In 1318, a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax, hit the animals of Europe. The disease targeted sheep and cattle, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry. This put another strain on the economy. The increasingly international nature of the European economies meant that the depression was felt across Europe. Due to pestilence, the failure of England's wool exports led to the destruction of the Flemish weaving industry. Unemployment bred crime and poverty.

Asian outbreak
The Central Asian scenario agrees with the first reports of outbreaks in China in the early 1330s. The plague struck the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334. During 1353-1354, more widespread disaster occurred. Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan and Suiyuan (a historical Chinese province that now forms part of Hebei and Inner Mongolia), throughout the Mongol and Chinese empires. Historian William McNeill noted that voluminous Chinese records on disease and social disruption survive from this period, but no one has studied these sources in depth. It is probable that the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond in 1347. In that same year, the Genoese possession of Caffa, a great trade emporium on the Crimean peninsula, came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army was reportedly withering from the disease, they might have decided to use the infected corpses as a biological weapon. The corpses were catapulted over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants. The Genoese traders fled, transferring the plague via their ships into the south of Europe, whence it rapidly spread. According to accounts, so many died in Caffa that the survivors had little time to bury them and bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls.

European outbreak
The Black Death rapidly spread along the major European sea and land trade routes. In October 1347, a fleet of Genovese trading ships fleeing Caffa reached the port of Messina. By the time the fleet reached Messina, all the crew members were either infected or dead. It is presumed that the ships also carried infected rats and/or fleas. Some ships were found grounded on shorelines, with no one aboard remaining alive. Looting of these lost ships also helped spread the disease. From there, the plague spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347-1348.
From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350, and finally to north-western Russia in 1351; however, the plague largely spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and parts of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Middle Eastern outbreak
The plague struck various countries in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. The disease first entered the region from southern Russia. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople and ports on the Black Sea. During 1348, the disease traveled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Asqalan, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348-49, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor. Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease. In 1351, Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. This coincided with the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprisonment in Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.

Europe and Middle East
It is estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of the European population died from the outbreak between 1348 and 1350. Contemporary observers estimated the toll to be one-third (e.g. Froissart), but modern estimates range from one-half to two-thirds of the population. As many as 25% of all villages were depopulated, mostly the smaller communities, as the few survivors fled to larger towns and cities. The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard, although rural areas (where 90% of the population lived were also significantly affected. A few rural areas, such as Eastern Poland and Lithuania, had such low populations and were so isolated that the plague made little progress. Parts of Hungary and, in modern Belgium, the Brabant region, Hainaut and Limbourg, as well as Santiago de Compostella, were unaffected for unknown reasons (some historians have assumed that the presence of sanguine groups in the local population helped them resist the disease, although these regions would be touched by the second plague burst in 1360-1363 and later during the numerous resurgences of the plague). Other areas which escaped the plague were isolated mountainous regions (e.g. the Pyrenees). Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with lice, fleas and rats, and subject to diseases related to malnutrition and poor hygiene.

The great population loss brought economic changes based on increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings. In Western Europe, the sudden scarcity of cheap labor provided an incentive for landlords to compete for peasants with wages and freedoms, an innovation that, some argue, represents the roots of capitalism, and the resulting social upheaval caused the Renaissance and even Reformation. In many ways, the Black Death improved the situation of surviving peasants. In Western Europe, because of the shortage of labor they were in more demand and had more power, and because of the reduced population, there was more fertile land available; however, the benefits would not be fully realized until 1470, nearly 120 years later, when overall population levels finally began to rise again. Social mobility as result of the Black Death has been postulated as most likely cause of the Great Vowel Shift, which is the principal reason why the spelling system in English today no longer reflects its pronunciation.

Recommended reading for those interested in medieval history.

I have NO IDEA!!!.......2007-01-09

I ordered this book weeks and weeks ago and it still has NOT arrived! I would recommend IF you want to order anything and expect it to arrive within a reasonable amount of time you do NOT order anything from one of Amazon.com's 'supplier's'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have no idea if this book is good or not---STILL WAITING ON IT!

Shaky history.......2006-12-26

Possibly I can inject a moderate voice into the rather polarized reviews so far. Benedictow certainly demonstrates, and so have many others, that bubonic plague was involved and could spread faster than we thought. On the other hand, he overgeneralizes local extreme kill rates, and he writes as if no other diseases were involved in the great death peak of 1346-1353. This would mean that all the other diseases that constantly afflicted medieval Europe somehow took a holiday! In fact, we have known since at least Han Zinsser's RATS, LICE AND HISTORY in 1937, to say nothing of the more up-to-date, careful work of Graham Twigg, that other diseases must have taken full advantage of the opportunity caused by social breakdown. And, as Benedictow says, that breakdown caused many to die of sheer starvation and lack of care. Infants who lost parents almost always died, sick or no. We must assume that _Yersinia pestis_ killed only some of the many victims.
We can, however, assume it killed far more than it would in modern India or Africa, because in most of Europe it was a virgin-soil epidemic. People had no evolved or acquired immunity. They were sitting ducks. As to its being there: As Eliz B notes in her review, plenty of plague DNA has been found in the victims, quite apart from perfectly sober and convincing contemporary accounts, which DO include plenty of notes on dying rats.
I have to say, I am annoyed by modern "scholarship" on the plague. There is some good work (David Herlihy, etc.), but too many people take undefensible, extreme positions--maintaining that it was all plague, or that no plague was involved at all. One recent book even proposes an Ebola-like virus, in spite of the obvious fact that Ebola puts itself out of business by killing or immunizing everyone in a village it strikes. We are better off with the classic works of Zinsser, Shrewsbury, Twigg, and Cipolla--they're out of date, but better out of date than rhetorically exaggerating and noncredible. I wish that more historians, with fewer axes to grind, would look at this epidemic.

A suggestion for the microbiologist reviewer.......2005-12-26

Please rethink your conclusions about this work. The authors whom you prefer have been shown to have used poor research methods and were at the further disadvantage (in the 1980s)of not having access to the DNA in the dental pulp extracted from known plague victims from both the second and third pandemics of plague. The pathogens causing modern diseases may actually be less "fragile" or likely to have acquired gene sequences from coexisting microbes than those of the Middle Ages, and yet we are certainly seeing rapid and unpredictable mutations in potentially lethal modern pathogens (H5N1) which may be the cause of the next pandemic. The Black Death no doubt owes some of its extreme lethality to its mutations within short spans of time and geography. The role of the HUMAN flea (P. irritans) and the common body louse, with which medieval person was rife, may have been more effective vectors of transmission than we might expect with our modern experiences with them. In fact, the human flea (not the rat flea) was further altered in its ability to tranfer the pathogen into the human bloodstream by the time of the 19th century plague episode. Conditions in Europe at the time of the 14th c.Black Death were more conducive to the human to human transmission of plague, no doubt, at least in its pneumonic form. As we see modern diseases mutate, so must the early Y. Pestis have mutated into extreme lethality. I suggest you read the conclusions of Michel Drancourt and Didier Raoult and their work on the extraction of Y. pestis DNA from the dental pulp of known plague victims. Your skepticism about Y. pestis may be put to rest. Yersinia pestis was the cause of the medieval plague, even if other diseases were active contemporaries! John Kelly also has a very cogent argument as to how the deadly disease gained a foothold in first the Asian Steppe and rapidly spread across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, even Greenland.

Too many gaps for this microbiologist.......2005-12-10

I am a research scientist and I have given much study to the nature of the Black Death and its recurring epidemics through the late 17th Century. After reading this book I am left with several pages of criticisms I have noted as I progressed from chapter to chapter. On innumerable instances very firm statements of fact are made regarding any number of subjects and absolutely no sources are provided. In some instances, even when referring to advanced concepts such as evolution of host:parasite interactions over time this is explained as common knowledge ("It was well known that...") with zero sources provided. Within the past 20 years a sizeable body of highly compelling research into the true identity of the causative agent of the Black Death has been conducted. Any serious student of the Black Death, microbiology/bacteriology, epidemiology or medieval history is doing themselves a disservice if they fail to examine at least one publication from this body of research. These include "Biology of Plagues" and "Return of the Black Death" by Susan Scott & Christopher Duncan; "The Black Death: a Biological Reappraisal" by Graham Twigg; "The Black Death Transformed" by Samuel K. Cohn; and "The Black Death and the Transformation of the West" by David Herlihy. The book reviewed here was published in 2004 and it takes the position that Yersinia pestis was the causative agent of the Black Death. Although this theory is certainly not new and has been advanced countless times before, this book fails to address the large body of evidence that counters this theory. While this is an understandable shortcoming of publications from over twenty years ago, it is not unreasonable to expect a current publication on the subject to at the very least acknowledge the existence of such evidence. To further strengthen the argument for Y. pestis, when contemporary sources describing the Black Death make assertions that are irreconcilable with modern data regarding Y. pestis the original sources are explained away as exaggerations and "tall tales". This book had great potential to address poorly studied aspects of the Black Death. Unfortunately, the poor documentation of sources and one-sided approach to data analysis of this book casts a shadow over its data and its conclusions.

The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History.(Book review): An article from: Renaissance Quarterly

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The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History.(Book review): An article from: Renaissance Quarterly
Mary Lindemann
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 946 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History.(Book review)
Author: Mary Lindemann
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 59 Issue: 2 Page: 599(3)

Article Type: Book review

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