Justinian's Flea by William Rosen - ISBN: 9781844137442
Paperback
Plague devastates Rome, changing history forever. One tiny flea.

Justinian's Flea

Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe

  • Paperback

    384 pages

  • Release Date

    1 July 2008

Summary

Popular history at its best—an epic story in which the newly united Roman Empire under Justinian is decimated by bubonic plague.

In the middle of the sixth century, the world’s smallest organism collided with the world’s mightiest empire. With the death of twenty-five million people, the Roman Empire, under her last great emperor, Justinian, was decimated. Before Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that carries bubonic plague, was finished, both the Roman and Persian empires were …

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781844137442
ISBN-10:1844137449
Author:William Rosen
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Imprint:Pimlico
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:384
Release Date:1 July 2008
Weight:497g
Dimensions:234mm x 153mm x 27mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

William Rosen doesn

William Rosen doesn´t 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
Ambitious and learned…readers will be swept along by the strong current of Mr Rosen’s good natured erudition * Economist *
A massively ambitious work that covers a great deal of ground….. a splendid biography of the emperor Justinian – Ian Pindar * Guardian *
Assertively modern in language and attitude, Rosen’s multi-disciplinary Byzantine history deals not only with fatal microbiology but also celebrates Justinian’s major achievements * The Times *
As a feat of scholarship alone this book is extraordinary, but what really impresses is the sense of ease its author manifests in whatever subject he enters. It’s as if he had been granted the freedom of late antiquity at birth … His eloquence, wit, narrative skill, learning and (one dares to add) compassion, hoist this book abouve the miasma of its deeply sombre subject and make it, strangely, a joy * Independent on Sunday *
Justinan was, as Rosen engagingly sets out, a master statesman…. Rosen carefully weighs his contribution * Financial Times *

About The Author

William Rosen

William Rosen was a senior executive at Macmillan and Simon & Schuster publishing houses for more than twenty-five years, working with authors including Bernard Lewis, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Philip Craig and Tim Clayton, Marina Benjamin, and Robert Lacey. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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