This lively work describes how the lives of ordinary people in the Middle Ages were transformed by a series of crises, whilst also showing how cultural assumptions, including a belief in the apocalypse, gave people an ability to face up positively to these problems. This second edition is brought fully up to date with recent scholarship, drawing some bold new conclusions and raising important questions.

Chronology; Maps; Prologue; Famine; War; Plague; Death; Epitaph; Tables; Bibliography; Index

John Aberth lives and teaches in Vermont. He is the author of five books, including The First Horseman: Disease in Human History (2007), The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 (2005), and A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film (2003).