Justinian's Flea
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Average rating3.5
A richly told story of the collision between nature's smallest organism and history's mightiest empireThe Emperor Justinian reunified Rome's fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. In his capital at Constantinople he built the world's most beautiful building, married its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed five thousand people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.In Justinian's Flea, William Rosen tells the story of history's first pandemic—a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, Rosen offers a sweeping narrative of one of the great hinge moments in history, one that will appeal to readers of John Kelly's The Great Mortality, John Barry's The Great Influenza, and Jared Diamond's Collapse.
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As a book about Justinian, awsome! I learned a lot about Justinian that I didn't know, and I have read about him. I learned some details about the Italian Wars that I didn't know, and especially about Justinian's activities in the East against the Persians. I liked reading where the plague came from, which was different from where we thought. I even enjoyed the parts explaining why the plague is so deadly, even though I didn't quite understand it.
What I didn't understand was why the book covered everything else, given the title. As several reviews have pointed out, the book is almost half-finished by the time the plague takes center stage. I read the book because I wanted to learn in-depth about it, and while I did get that, it seemed rambling. Much of it seemed irrelevant to the thesis. Especially the chapter at the end about Chinese silk. I think it would have been better to retitle the book with the plague being a part of many things discussed. I also didn't care for all the comparisons to modern times. I don't mind a few, but he made too many references to modern times for my taste.
Overall, a good book, even if it strays somewhat from what the title would suggest. If you want to know about the Plague of Justinian, this is the book to read, just be aware that it covers quite a bit more.
