The Black Death in Europe, from its arrival in 1347-52 through successive waves into the early modern period, has been seriously misunderstood by historians. This revolutionary account provides compelling evidence that the Black Death could, in fact, have been almost any disease other than the rat-based bubonic plague. The author argues that since the late nineteenth century, the rat and flea have stood wrongly accused as the agents of transmission and historians and scientists have uncritically imposed the epidemiology of modern plague on the past.