A haunting account of the 1665 plague in London, this almost reads like Dante's Inferno or Purgatorio, in which the author takes you on a tour of the world that seems to be falling apart around them.

Reading this in 2020, you'll see many parallels (stay-at-home orders, social distancing, daily numbers, etc), but it's also a small consolation that we live in more modern times and that the mortality rate of COVID19 isn't as bad as the bubonic plague.

Defoe gives us statistics along the way and throughout the year, although having a geographic grasp of each town he mentions would help while reading it. There's also a short tale about a small group of men who escaped the city and went from town-to-town in the countryside. On one hand it's very descriptive and thrilling, but on the other it makes you wonder how he came across the information.