Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Journal of the Plague Year by John H. Plumb, Daniel Defoe ISBN: 0-452-00689-9 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: May, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Building our imaginary
Comment: This is quite an interesting book. Looks pretty much like journalism in a time the concept was not yet developed. It is very realistic and it looks like the author was actually present went the story happened, when in fact he wrote the whole thing many years after. Another interesting aspect regarding this book is that it "constructed" in a sense, our imaginary regarding middle ages epidemics. The descriptions are so vivid that they were used many, many times in the movies, paintings and other fictional pieces to characterise this kind of situations. Just for the sake of curiosity, one can read Noah Gordon's "The Physiscian" or watch the movie "Interview with the Vampire" (pay attention to the episode of the epidemics in New Orleans), to see that Defoe's influence came a long way through. Good read!
Rating: 5
Summary: Applicable Today - very well told and very informative
Comment: This story of the the effects of the Plague in London in 1665 should be required reading for all people of all civilized countries. Although it is fiction, he relied so heavily on documented history that his story stands up very well against modern day documentaries. It is also a gripping and easy to read book. How the Plague started, how its spread was covered up initially and why, how the government was forced to respond, what happened to the economy and the outlying regions - these things could happen any day in any year in any country.
SARS broke out just after I finished the book and I was hooked watching it spread. Everything he said started happening from the house quarantines to its effect on the Chinese economy. Having DeFoe's book on my mind when all this was happening - and while we still didn't know what was causing SARS - had me glued to the CDC web site (it had come through the US and hit Canada and I live near a big international airport). This is a very real warning and will not lose its timeliness as long as people build cities and economies. He is not just describing what happened but giving us warning and ideas for how it can be handled better.
Rating: 4
Summary: Public health primer
Comment: Probably one of the first examples of journalistic fiction, Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" is a pseudo-eyewitness account of the London plague of 1665. Writing this in 1722, Defoe casts himself into the role of his uncle whom he calls H.F. and who recounts the events in grisly detail but with magnanimous compassion. Aside from the prose, the book has a surprisingly modern edge in the way it combines facts about a sensationally dire historical event with "human interest" stories for personal appeal. It seems so factual that at times it's easy to forget that it's just a fictitious account of a real event.
The plague (H.F. writes) arrives by way of carriers from the European mainland and spreads quickly through the unsanitary, crowded city despite official preventive measures; the symptoms being black bruises, or "tokens," on the victims' bodies, resulting in fever, delirium, and usually death in a matter of days. The public effects of the plague are readily imaginable: dead-carts, mass burial pits, the stench of corpses not yet collected, enforced quarantines, efforts to escape to the countryside, paranoia and superstitions, quacks selling fake cures, etc. Through all these observations, H.F. remains a calm voice of reason in a city overtaken by panic and bedlam. By the time the plague has passed, purged partly by its own self-limiting behavior and partly by the Great Fire of the following year, the (notoriously inaccurate) Bills of Mortality indicate the total death toll to be about 68,000, but the actual number is probably more like 100,000 -- about a fifth of London's population.
Like Defoe's famous survivalist sketch "Robinson Crusoe," the book's palpable moralism is adequately camouflaged by the conviction of its narrative and the humanity of its narrator, a man who, like Crusoe, trusts God's providence to lead him through the hardships, come what may. What I like about this "Journal" is that its theme is more relevant than its narrow, dated subject matter suggests: levelheadedness in the face of catastrophe and the emergence of a stronger and wiser society.
 |
Title: The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Modern Library) by Samuel Pepys, Richard Le Gallienne, Robert Louis Stevenson ISBN: 0679642218 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Plague (Vintage International) by ALBERT CAMUS ISBN: 0679720219 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (Penguin English Library) by Daniel Defoe, David Blewett ISBN: 0140431497 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1982 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
 |
Title: Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics) by Daniel Defoe, Virginia Woolf ISBN: 0375760105 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
 |
Title: Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (Penguin Classics) by Samuel Richardson, Angus Ross ISBN: 0140432159 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1986 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
