"World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads...

"The Black Death of the fourteenth century wouldn’t have been as deadly if people had just shut their windows! RIGHT? WRONG! Despite what people thought at the time, a closed window won’t do anything against bubonic plague. The truth is, the plague wasn’t caused by breathing in “bad air”. It was transmitted by infected fleas biting (and, in the process, throwing up into) people. No joke."--Back cover.

"The deadly outbreak of plague known as the Great Mortality, which struck Europe in the mid 1300s and raged for four centuries, wiped out more than 25 million people in the course of just two years. With its vicious onslaught, life changed for millions of people almost instantaneously. Deadly pandemics have always been a part of life, from the Great Mortality of the Middle Ages, to the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, to the eruption of COVID-19...