The Black Death of 1347-53 was the single most devastating natural disaster in the known history of humanity. It ruined great empires and caused incalculable suffering, killing perhaps half of the medieval world’s population.

Thomas Asbridge's remarkable new book is the first to describe these waves of catastrophic plague as a pan-Eurasian phenomenon. The disease spread with fearsome rapidity, coursing along trade and travel routes, claiming the lives of millions in the likes of England and Egypt, Italy and Iberia.

While there are substantial gaps in our evidence from this period, many documents surviving – including chronicles, poems, letters – that make these events shocking and immediate. Asbridge uses every kind of record to give the reader a powerful sense of how these large, sophisticated and globalized societies were brought to their knees by this terrible scourge.

The aftershocks of the Black Death continued for many years after its initial, catastrophic appearance and these too are fully discussed here. This is a superb book on an awe-inspiring and deeply frightening era in human history.