Lena Huldén's, Larry Huldén's, and Kari Heliövaara's book Rutto discusses the effect the plague had on human life during different historical periods and considers the future effect of the plague.

The book goes over the three main plague epidemics. The authors describe the outbreak of each pandemic, how they spread, their effects, and their disappearance. In my opinion, it was very beneficial for the book to cover all three pandemics, as in general our view of the plague is limited to the Black Death.

Beyond covering the pandemics, the authors also spent some time considering the use of the plague as a biological weapon, and how different countries have explored that in the past. Finally, they considered what the implications of a new plague pandemic would be in the modern world.

This was a book I read for a course (as is most of what I'm reading currently), so it's not something I would have regularly chosen over other books I actually want to read, but I'm actually sort of glad I picked it up from the library. As an object the book is really beautiful and it was an interesting introduction to the topic. My main criticism is that it didn't go into as much detail as I would have expected. However, I thought it was interesting that the authors considered multiple different aspects of the disease, from its biological origins to its cultural effects on the people of Medieval Europe.

-Laura