[Sca-cooks] BMR: Dyer, Making a Living (Murray) (fwd)

[sjk3 at cornell.edu]

This is kind of large, so I'm not posting the entire review to the list.
It also isn't really about cooking, so it's sort of OT, but not OP!  Let
me know off-list if you'd like the entire review.

Sandra

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 21:43:22 -0500 (EST)
From: owner-bmr-l at brynmawr.edu
Subject: BMR: Dyer, Making a Living (Murray)

(from TMR 03.01.05)

 Dyer, Christopher. <i>Making a Living in the Middle Ages. The
 People of Britain, 850-1520</i>. New Haven: Yale University
 Press, 2002. Pp. 336. ISBN: 0-300-09060-9.

    Reviewed by James M. Murray
         University of Cincinnati
         James.Murray at uc.edu

 In the past twenty years, Christopher Dyer has written a
 series  of valuable syntheses of the vast and increasing
 research devoted to the economic history of medieval Britain.
 Bearing the modest titles of <i>Everday life in medieval
 England</i>, <i>Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society</i>
 and the invaluable <i>Standards of Living in the later Middle
 Ages</i>, each book has made accessible to the non-specialist
 the history of a medieval economy unique in its richness of
 detail thanks to the unrivalled sources that survive and the
 devoted and impressive work of a large number of British and
 North American scholars. Moreover, Dyer himself must be
 counted among that number, and he continues to publish
 specialized work on the urban and rural history of medieval
 Britain. <i>Making a Living</i> is thus the latest of an
 established genre whose modest title masks an ambitious and
 erudite body of work.

<snip>

 "Making a Living In the Middle Ages" succeeds admirably as a
 general work for those who desire an up-to-date,
 well-organized summary of a generation of research on the
 medieval British economy.  It is not a work for specialists,
 however, who will search in vain for footnotes and will find
 little solace in a rather weak "Further Reading"  section at
 the back of the book. Within those boundaries, the book is
 both a valuable and persuasive work of scholarship.