A review by bit101
The Great Mortality by John Kelly

3.0

Parts of this were really fascinating. Parts were... too off track. Pages and pages about some medieval city, who lived there, what life was like, the celebrities, the villains, the standard of living, the arts, the politics, the gossip, etc. ... then 50% of them died of plague in a page or so. One very interesting side topic was the discussion of the Jews during this period. In many towns and cities, in countries all over Europe, trying to come up with a cause for the plague, people repeatedly settled on the explanations that the Jews had literally poisoned the wells. This lead the the brutal killing, almost invariably involving burning to death of thousands (millions?) of Jews.

The book wasn't quite what I was looking for, but overall was decently interesting.