Justinian's Flea

Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe

By: William Rosen

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The emperor Justinian reunified Rome's fractured empire by defeating the Goths and Vandals who had separated Italy, Spain, and North Africa from imperial rule. At his capital in Constantinople, he built the world's most beautiful building, married the most powerful empress, and wrote the empire's most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next five hundred years. Then, in the summer of 542, he encountered a flea. The ensuing outbreak of bubonic plague killed 5,000 people a day in Constantinople and nearly killed Justinian himself.

In Justinian's Flea, William Rosen tells the story of history's first pandemic - a plague seven centuries before the Black Death that killed tens of millions, devastated the empires of Persia and Rome, left a path of victims from Ireland to Iraq, and opened the way for the armies of Islam. Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, Rosen offers a sweeping narrative of one of the great hinge moments in history, one that will appeal to readers of John Kelly's The Great Mortality, John Barry's The Great Influenza, and Jared Diamond's Collapse.

©2007 William Rosen (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Just OK

Lots of information, but the authors digress constantly. The irrelevant details get in the way of understanding the big picture. Also, the audio book is poorly edited. Several sections have 10-15 seconds of repeated text. Summary: a very interesting subject, but the editor should be fired.

Narration kills it

I keep trying to go back and give it a chance as the topic is interesting to me but the narration is that bad

Ditto to Deadly Boring

I had a hard time getting to the end of this. Towards the middle of the second half of book two I decided life was too short to listen to the anatomy of different bacterium, etc. I have a headache.

Poor narrative

This book is WAY... too detailed. The narrative gets lost time and again. Some sections are incredibly boring. I think the author is just trying to show how much he knows.

A fabulous book WRECKED by a dreadful narrator

What disappointed you about Justinian's Flea?

I had read the hardback edition when it was released and I LOVED it. I just can't believe that a bad narrator can so completely wreck a book. The narrator sounds like he is impersonating George Bush Sr. And his delivery is monotone. Its an insult to the source material. I'd love the publisher to rerelease this with a different narrator.

Justinian's Flea

This is the worst reader I have come across in the many years I have been purchasing audible books!
Avoid him at all costs.
Read the book in hard copy, it was interesting.

terrible narrator

the book itself seemed interesting but the narrator was so flat and boring as to make it unlistinable. A complete waste, I reallly wouldn't recommend it.

Not even a flea market book

First, listen to a sample, I wish I had. If this narrator doesn't put you to sleep then you have a serious case of insomnia. I suppose in some ways his voice does fit the book, tedious, and profoundly uninteresting. I love history, I read/listen to history books often, quite often. I have never stopped listening to one because I just couldn't take it anymore, at least not until now. If you are interested in Justinian, or the effects of the plague, find a book that actually talks about them. This book is not among those that do. As for the narrator somebody please buy this guy an inflection (and frankly, yes, I could do it better, much better). As Monty Python once put it so well.."run away..run away."

Wake me up!

The narrator's monotonic delivery is absurd.
Make certain that you listen to a sample before buying. The content is detailed and very interesting, but the narrator should look into coaching. It is at times difficult to determine when a sentence ends...the reader was very off putting.

Deadly Boring

I love history and looked forward listening to this story. The title was intriguing. Then the reality hit me: deadly boring. The writer tries to cramp whole centuries in one story and the narrator just spouts fact, figures, names, and places in a monotonous toon. After the first 40 minutes, I tried skipping forward in the hope to reach the real flea story. Didn't happen. This is the first book, of my 240 books, that I didn't finish. Not worth my money.