Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowJustinian's Flea
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreThe 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 its most powerful empress, and wrote its most enduring legal code, seemingly restoring Rome's fortunes for the next 500 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.
Weaving together evolutionary microbiology, economics, military strategy, ecology, and ancient and modern medicine, William 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.
William Rosen was an editor and publisher at Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and the Free Press for more than twenty-five years. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Barrett Whitener has won half a dozen coveted AudioFile Earphones Awards for his audiobook narration. His audiography includes A Reporter's Life by Walter Cronkite, Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose, and Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.