{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0292722133?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"0292722133","authors":["Stuart J. Borsch"],"book_id":"9780292722132","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/the-black-death-in-egypt-and-england-9780292722132","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780292722132.jpg?v=f4e2bd3ac3851bad","description":"Throughout the fourteenth century AD/eighth century H, waves of plague swept out of Central Asia and decimated populations from China to Iceland. So devastating was the Black Death across the Old World that some historians have compared its effects to those of a nuclear holocaust. As countries began to recover from the plague during the following century, sharp contrasts arose between the East, where societies slumped into long-term economic and social decline, and the West, where technological and social innovation set the stage for Europe's dominance into the twentieth century. Why were there such opposite outcomes from the same catastrophic event? In contrast to previous studies that have looked to differences between Islam and Christianity for the solution to the puzzle, this pioneering work proposes that a country's system of landholding primarily determined how successfully it recovered from the calamity of the Black Death. Stuart Borsch compares the specific cases of Egypt and England, countries whose economies were based in agriculture and whose pre-plague levels of total and agrarian gross domestic product were roughly equivalent. Undertaking a thorough analysis of medieval economic data, he cogently explains why Egypt's centralized and urban landholding system was unable to adapt to massive depopulation, while England's localized and rural landholding system had fully recovered by the year 1500.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780292722132","publication_date":"20050601","publisher":"University of Texas Press","slug":"the-black-death-in-egypt-and-england","subtitle":"A Comparative Study","title":"The Black Death in Egypt and England"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"HIS002030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Ancient Egypt","score":0.7002,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS037010","confidence_band":"low","label":"Medieval History","score":0.6927,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS037090","confidence_band":"low","label":"16th-Century History","score":0.6782,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"HIS002030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Ancient Egypt","score":0.7002,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS037010","confidence_band":"low","label":"Medieval History","score":0.6927,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS037090","confidence_band":"low","label":"16th-Century History","score":0.6782,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"BUS023000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Economic History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"HIS037010","confidence_band":"high","label":"Medieval History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"MED039000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Medical History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Ancient Egypt","score":0.7002,"slug":"ancient-egypt"},{"label":"Medieval History","score":0.6927,"slug":"medieval-history"},{"label":"16th-Century History","score":0.6782,"slug":"16th-century-history"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers interested in how landholding shaped recovery from the Black Death","Readers of medieval economic history comparing Egypt and England"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Philip Ziegler"],"book_id":"9780061718984","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780061718984.jpg?v=cb6e2aed64ca2eb8","score":0.7838,"title":"The Black Death","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780061718984"},{"authors":["John Hatcher"],"book_id":"9780306815713","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780306815713.jpg?v=c8b74ab9a33e1237","score":0.7536,"title":"The Black Death","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780306815713"},{"authors":["John Kelly"],"book_id":"9780060006938","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780060006938.jpg?v=caa134607e6fe874","score":0.7533,"title":"The Great Mortality","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780060006938"},{"authors":["Roberta Edwards"],"book_id":"9780593383650","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593383650.jpg?v=e78fc0b15bcb8e02","score":0.6971,"title":"What Was the Plague?","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593383650"},{"authors":["James Cross Giblin"],"book_id":"9780064461955","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780064461955.jpg?v=b25d071e471927f7","score":0.6668,"title":"When Plague Strikes","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780064461955"},{"authors":["Jan Assmann"],"book_id":"9780801479731","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780801479731.jpg?v=626d351986c8273b","score":0.6585,"title":"Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780801479731"},{"authors":["Lauren Tarshis"],"book_id":"9781338891805","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781338891805.jpg?v=ef4f8cc855b3e3ff","score":0.6583,"title":"I Survived the Black Death, 1348 (i Survived #24)","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781338891805"},{"authors":["E. A. Wallis Budge"],"book_id":"9781250384300","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781250384300.jpg?v=36f56624aede25a2","score":0.6499,"title":"The Egyptian Book of the Dead","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781250384300"}],"topics":[],"what_you_get":["Themes: Black Death and depopulation, Landholding systems, Economic recovery.","Reading lane: Ancient Egypt and Medieval History.","Publisher: University of Texas Press."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.94,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["Readers interested in how landholding shaped recovery from the Black Death","Readers of medieval economic history comparing Egypt and England"],"themes":["Black Death and depopulation","Landholding systems","Economic recovery"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":0,"goodreads_ratings_count":5,"goodreads_reviews_count":1,"quality_score":0.8207}}