Information about the author

William Rosen, a former editor and publisher at Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and The Free Press, is the author of "Justinian's Flea" and "The Most Powerful Idea in the World." He lives in New Jersey.

Blurb

How a cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history—years before the Black Death. In May 1315, it started to rain. For the seven disastrous years that followed, Europeans would be visited by a series of curses unseen since the third book of Exodus: floods, ice, failures of crops and cattle, and epidemics not just of disease, but of pike, sword, and spear. All told, six million lives—one-eighth of Europe's total population—would be lost. With a category-defying knowledge of science and history, William Rosen tells the stunning story of the oft-overlooked Great Famine.