A Reader's Opinion on Justinian's Flea
Posted by Vicki A Benge
Justinian’s Flea is the first book of William Rosen, a former senior executive at the major publishing houses of Macmillan and Simon and Schuster. Apparently he learned a great deal from all those books I’m sure he read along the way.
In my opinion, Justinian’s Flea is the perfect example of what book critics term "narrative history" and historians call "interdisciplinary history." In and of itself, the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I and his partner, wife, and counsel, Theodora, has been chronicled in many books of history for the legacy of the Justinian Code (of law); for efforts to reunite the failing Roman Empire; and for the construction of the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, (the Church of St Sophia in Constantinople).
In Rosen’s book, the reader can be fooled by the title into thinking the work will focus on the plague that occurred during Justinian's time. However, the book delves into the microscopic world of the bacterium Yersinia pestis; historic climatology; military history; architecture; medicinal remedies; the economics and trade around the Mediterranean Sea; rat biology; and into other areas before finally getting around to the plague toward the end of the book.
If you enjoy interdisciplinary history this is a good read. Rosen manages to span a variety of subjects and pull the contents together to show how a microorganism helped open the gates for Islam to enter into Western Civilization.
Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea. New York: Viking, 2007. [ISBN-13: 978-0-670-0355-8]
