From the Brink of the Apocalypse

Book excerpt: It was a firm belief in the ways of providence and the first stirrings of greater political freedom, says Aberth (history, U. of Nebraska), that allowed European communities to endure the full share and more of misery that befell them during the later Middle Ages. He takes his themes from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to describe responses to the Great Famine and the Black Death that swept away nearly half of the continent's population, while English and French leaders occupied themselves with the Hundred Years War. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR