In the 1300s, a third of the population of Europe died of plague carried by rat-borne fleas, shocking the medieval world to its foundations. “Very rarely,†award-winning author Charles Mee writes, “does a single event change history by itself. Yet an event of the magnitude of the Black Death could not fail to have had an enormous impact.†Here, in this Kindle Single, is the counterintuitive story of the plague and how, despite the horrible suffering it created, it actually opened people's minds to the possibilities of science and human creativity.