I finished a quick read this afternoon, while waiting in Philly: " In the Wake of the Plague ", by Norman Cantor. It's more of a "cultural history" of the plague, looking at the changes that followed after the death. A lot of hinge points came up:

• The death of Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III of England. She was on her way to marry the King of Castile. Had that gone through, there would have been dynastic links between England and Spain - who knows how that would have affected the future history of relations between the two?
• The pogroms against Jews (especially in central Europe) caused a flood of refugees into Casimir's Poland. That led to the large Jewish community in eastern Europe, which was later targeted by the Czars (and extinguished by the Nazis)
• The labor shortages in England, which led to a backlash by the monarchy and nobles - and in turn led to the peasant revolt of 1391 (which in turn led to more brutality).

Anyway, that's just hitting on a few of the high points of the book. Cantor's got a great conversational style, which makes the book very approachable. I recommend it highly.

Fortunately, I brought another book along: " Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World ". I'm not done with this one, but it's a fascinating look at the late 14th and early 15th centuries in central Asia, when Tamerlane raged across the steppes. The name we know him by is one he would have been offended by; it's a corruption of "Temur the Lame", which refers to an injury received in his early career.

Like a lot of rulers from that era, he was a complex mix of culture and bloodthirstiness - it's likely that he killed millions as he built his empire. One thing I didn't know - he's apparently been rehabilitated in Uzbekistan since the fall of the USSR. His birthplace is in that nation, and he's become something of a national symbol. It's enough to make you wonder how people like Stalin and Hitler will be viewed 6 centuries from now...

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