The calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. The author examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched f...

The calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were agonisingly widespread. The author examines first-hand accounts of men and women throughout the world describing what they saw and suffered during a sequence of political, economic and social crises that stretched from 1618 to the 1680s.