History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy

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The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy
Randolf G. S. Cooper
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521824443

Book Description

The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns of 1803 represented the last serious indigenous obstacle to the formation of the British Raj. This study examines Maratha military culture through a battle-by-battle analysis of the campaigns. Randolf Cooper challenges the ethnocentric assumptions that associate Western political ascendancy with "The Military Revolution" and argues that the real contest for India was the struggle to control the South Asian military economy, rather than a single decisive military battle. Victory depended more on economics and intelligence than on superiority in discipline, drill and technology.

Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

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Essential but not easy or pleasant reading.
An leabhar is fearr ar an drochshaol - riamh!

Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
Cormac O'Grada
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849
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Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850

ASIN: 0691070156

Amazon.com

The Irish famine of 1847 and 1848, when harvests failed and more than 3 million Irish died or were forced to emigrate, is one of the signal events of Irish history. The famine that devastated the country, notes Cormac Ó Gráda, professor of economics at University College, Dublin, was exceptional in its severity. "The cost in deaths of many highly publicized Third World famines in the recent past is modest by comparison," he writes, adding that real comparisons come only on the scale of China's catastrophic Great Leap Forward famine of 1959 to 1962 (when, Walter Becker alleges in Hungry Ghosts, 30 million Chinese died). The reason the Irish famine struck so hard, " Gráda argues, is that the Irish food supply was already tenuous; dispossessed from their land and made to rely on a single crop, the potato, the tenant agriculturists of Ireland simply had no resources or stores on which to fall back.

Important though the famine was to Ireland's history, Gráda notes, historians began to study it closely only in the last decade; in that time, dozens of books and monographs have been issued, amplifying a hitherto sparse literature. His scholarly book, heavily documented and full of statistics drawn from censuses and other demographic surveys, is itself a major contribution to historical writing on the subject. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó'Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years.

Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó'Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish.

Ó'Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition.

The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.

Customer Reviews:

Essential but not easy or pleasant reading........2001-02-19

Both the tragic subject and the density of documentation, with graphs and statistics, make this a hard book to read. The Famine killed over a million people, even on the most conservative estimates. It virtually wiped out the Gaeltacht. The question that resonates today is whether fewer people would have died if Ireland in 1840 had been an independent country, with its boundaries at the salt water. You'd have to read this book at least, and maybe some others as well, to get an answer to that question.

An leabhar is fearr ar an drochshaol - riamh!.......1999-05-14

This is a fraught subject, but O Grada handles it with both rigour and compassion.

The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel

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The New Economic Criticism meets Victorian Britain

The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel
Catherine Gallagher
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism from 1719-1900
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ASIN: 0691123586

Book Description

The Body Economic revises the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Britain by demonstrating that political economists and the writers who often presented themselves as their literary antagonists actually held most of their basic social assumptions in common. Catherine Gallagher demonstrates that political economists and their Romantic and early-Victorian critics jointly relocated the idea of value from the realm of transcendent spirituality to that of organic "life," making human sensations--especially pleasure and pain--the sources and signs of that value. Classical political economy, this book shows, was not a mechanical ideology but a form of nineteenth-century organicism, which put the body and its feelings at the center of its theories, and neoclassical economics built itself even more self-consciously on physiological premises.

The Body Economic explains how these shared views of life, death, and sensation helped shape and were modified by the two most important Victorian novelists: Charles Dickens and George Eliot. It reveals how political economists interacted crucially with the life sciences of the nineteenth century--especially with psychophysiology and anthropology--producing the intellectual world that nurtured not only George Eliot's realism but also turn-of-the-century literary modernism.

Customer Reviews:

The New Economic Criticism meets Victorian Britain.......2007-01-04

Gallagher attempts to organize British Victorian novels and economic criticism with two well-defined conceptual tools: bioeconomics and somaeconomics. The first covers those concerned with looking at Victorian economic writings from the vantage point of life and death (Malthus), while the latter follows the lines of utilitarianism initiated by Bentham and having to do with questions of pleasure and pain. These concepts are applied to the developments (and rejections) of political economy over the span of the XIXth century. What was most helpful to me is her use of these concepts in relation to her readings of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (bioeconomic) and Hard Times (somaeconomic) while comparing these novels to the work of John Ruskin (Munera Pulveris,1871 is used to help elucidate Dickens's last novel Our Mutual Friend).

Gallagher has a great skill in combining her grasp of theory in both economics and literature to her sound readings of Malthus, Ricardo, Ruskin, Dickens, and Eliot. There are other treats as well. Throughout the book she includes excellent observations on other writers (i.e. Herbert Spencer) that generally don't receive much attention. Gallagher states in her introduction that students of literature (esp. from the early XXthc. to the present) have generally overlooked the great political economists of the XIXth century in part because of the "packaging" of their thought as ideological, irrelevant, or simply useless. Such labels should never prevent us from engaging with these texts. This practice can be noted even in editing practices, where little or no information is given about economic issues that determine the outcome of realist novels. Here I would signal a great exception in some British editing practices, esp. those influenced by Ian Small. Today we can no longer afford to dismiss economic thought from our analyses (nor should we have in the past!) of literary works and certainly not from our editing practices. To do so is essentially to misread, or to cause to misread, and thereby to treat the Victorians unhistorically. Any Victorianist should know this. When I began looking at some of the anthologies from two or more decades ago I find small pieces from Ruskin, Morris, Marx, and Engels. Rarely Smith, Ricardo, or Jevons. The new economic criticism does not ignore these "Other" contributions to the development of economics. Gallagher's readings attempt to go beyond simple models of production, distribution, and consumer economics to consider the effects of other economic thought as well.

Gallagher does not treat the late XIXth century with as much detail as she does the High Victorian period. For those interested in the period following 1871 (the year that marks the shift, the "Marginalist Revolution") I would recommend (for late British) Regenia Gagnier and Ian Small. Walter Benn Michaels (The Gold Standard) is still the best for late XIXth c. American literature and economics. I also highly recommend Gallagher's The Industrial Revolution of English Fiction (1988) which will provide a broader context for The Body Economic.

Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning)

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Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning)
Manu Goswami
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0226305090

Book Description

When did categories such as a national space and economy acquire self-evident meaning and a global reach? Why do nationalist movements demand a territorial fix between a particular space, economy, culture, and people?

Producing India mounts a formidable challenge to the entrenched practice of methodological nationalism that has accorded an exaggerated privilege to the nation-state as a dominant unit of historical and political analysis. Manu Goswami locates the origins and contradictions of Indian nationalism in the convergence of the lived experience of colonial space, the expansive logic of capital, and interstate dynamics. Building on and critically extending subaltern and postcolonial perspectives, her study shows how nineteenth-century conceptions of India as a bounded national space and economy bequeathed an enduring tension between a universalistic political economy of nationhood and a nativist project that continues to haunt the present moment.

Elegantly conceived and judiciously argued, Producing India will be invaluable to students of history, political economy, geography, and Asian studies.

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City of Capital
Bruce G. Carruthers
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

ASIN: 0691049602

Book Description

While many have examined how economic interests motivate political action, Bruce Carruthers explores the reverse relationship by focusing on how political interests shape a market. He sets his inquiry within the context of late Stuart England, when an active stock market emerged and when Whig and Tory parties vied for control of a newly empowered Parliament. Carruthers examines the institutional linkage between politics and the market that consisted of three joint-stock companies--the Bank of England, the East India Company, and the South Sea Company--which all loaned large sums to the government and whose shares dominated trading on the stock market. Through innovative research that connects the voting behavior of individuals in parliamentary elections with their economic behavior in the stock market, Carruthers demonstrates that party conflict figured prominently during the company foundings as Whigs and Tories tried to dominate company directorships. For them, the national debt was as much a political as a fiscal instrument.

In 1712, the Bank was largely controlled by the Whigs, and the South Sea Company by the Tories. The two parties competed, however, for control of the East India Company, and so Whigs tended to trade shares only with Whigs, and Tories with Tories. Probing such connections between politics and markets at both institutional and individual levels, Carruthers ultimately argues that competitive markets are not inherently apolitical spheres guided by economic interest but rather ongoing creations of social actors pursuing multiple goals.

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While many have examined how economic interests motivate political action, Bruce Carruthers explores the reverse relationship in political economy by focusing on how political interests shape a market. The author sets his inquiry within the context of late Stuart England, when an active stock market emerged and when Whig and Tory parties vied for control of a newly empowered Parliament. He examines the institutional linkage between politics and the market that consisted of three joint-stock companies - the Bank of England, the East India Company, and the South Sea Company - which all loaned large sums to the government and whose shares dominated trading on the stock market. Through innovative research that connects the voting behavior of individuals in parliamentary elections with their economic behavior in the stock market, Carruthers demonstrates that party conflict figured prominently during the company foundings as Whigs and Tories tried to dominate company directorships. For them, the national debt was as much a political as a fiscal instrument. In 1712, the Bank was largely controlled by the Whigs, and the South Sea Company by the Tories. The two parties competed, however, for control of the East India Company, and so Whigs tended to trade shares only with Whigs, and Tories with Tories. Probing such connections between politics and markets at both institutional and individual levels, Carruthers ultimately argues that competitive markets are not inherently apolitical spheres guided by economic interest but rather ongoing creations of social actors pursuing multiple goals.

The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America

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The Truth About the Spanish Heritage
A fascinating historical-comparative study

The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America
Claudio Veliz
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century

ASIN: 0520083164

Book Description

Claudio Véliz adopts the provocative metaphor of foxes and hedgehogs that Isaiah Berlin used to describe opposite types of thinkers. Applying this metaphor to modern culture, economic systems, and the history of the New World, Véliz provides an original and lively approach to understanding the development of English and Spanish America over the past 500 years.
According to Véliz, the dominant cultural achievements of Europe's English- and Spanish-speaking peoples have been the Industrial Revolution and the Counter-Reformation, respectively. These overwhelming cultural constructions have strongly influenced the subsequent historical developments of their great cultural outposts in North and South America. The British brought to the New World a stubborn ability to thrive on diversity and change that was entirely consistent with their vernacular Gothic style. The Iberians, by contrast, brought a cultural tradition shaped like a vast baroque dome, a monument to their successful attempt to arrest the changes that threatened their imperial moment.
Véliz writes with erudition and wit, using a multitude of sources--historians and classical sociologists, Greek philosophers, today's newspaper sports pages, and modern literature--to support a novel explanation of the prosperity and expanding cultural influence of the gothic fox and the economic and cultural decline endured by the baroque hedgehog.

Customer Reviews:

The Truth About the Spanish Heritage.......2005-09-03

This is an excellent book! It was written more than ten years ago by a Latin who is obviously an Anglophile. He goes to the origins of English and Spanish character traits, the origins of Latin American dislike of things U.S. and makes a very compelling case that those countries of Spanish origins, due to their heritage, have and will have a very hard time developing in our changing world. It is not politically correct but it is real. A must read for those trying to understand why everything south of the Rio Grande is so terrible.

For those interested, read Carlos Alberto Montaner and Octavio Paz, one Cuban the other Mexican (1990 Nobel Prize winner for literature, actually poetry) for similar views from authors who are not enamored of the Anglo-American world.

A fascinating historical-comparative study.......2001-08-03

This novel take on the comparative economic fortunes of the north and south should encourage other scholars to focus on questions of economic culture. Too much work in Latin American studies is carried out from within a structuralist paradigm, yielding the same stale conclusions. Veliz' insistence that we cannot overlook cultural factors is timely and apt.

Book Description

This materialist study of the short story's development in three diverse magazines reveals how, at the dawn of modernism, commercial pressures prompted modernist formal innovation in popular magazines, whilst anti-commercial opacity paradoxically formed the basis of an effective marketing strategy that appealed to elitism. Integrating methods of cultural studies with formal analyses, this study builds upon recent work challenging Andreas Huyssen's provocative formation, the great divide of modernism.

A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297-1344

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Full of "perhaps" and "maybes"
An interesting book about a peasant's life
cecilia who?
Price is nuts
An Excellent Primer for Medieval History

A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297-1344
Judith Bennett
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0072903317

Book Description

This history of medieval village life is told through the experiences of Cecilia Penifader, a peasant woman who lived on one English manor in the early fourteenth century. This truly unique book offers a wealth of insight into medieval peasant society, bringing many of the characteristics of a time and a people to life. Short and readable, it is an ideal text for undergraduate teaching, suitable for courses in Western civilization, medieval history, women's history, and English history.

Customer Reviews:

Full of "perhaps" and "maybes".......2007-04-08

Admittedly I wasn't reading this book for pleasure, as I had to read it for a class, but it is very poor indeed. Okay, I'm not a PhD historian like Bennett, but that shouldn't mean my criticism is invalid. The book is an interesting concept, trying find out what a peasant's life was like, but is just FULL of "perhaps she did this..." and "maybe she did that..." Bennett, in reality, is writing a book about the medieval peasantry, trying to make it interesting and accessible to college students by making the book revolve around a character. However, the book proves condescending, and left me very frustrated as a slammed the book shut on the final page. Here are a few examples:

"I felt as if Cecilia was demanding...that I write her life" p. 138

And regarding the 'doodle' in the court records: "If Cecilia is the woman shown in this drawing, we can surmise that she was tall, thin, curly-headed, and perhaps the bearer of a prominent nose" p. 130

As with many other textbooks for college, this was too expensive for only 138 pages, and should be the $10 it is in the Marketplace, not the $30 that my bookstore was charging.

The unfortunate truth is that it will be very difficult to ever know what life was like for the average medieval peasant since they did not write anything, and Bennett's account seems to add no real value to this subject area, and the 'story' of Cecilia Penifader could have easily been summarized on a page or two.

An interesting book about a peasant's life.......2006-08-17

This was an assigned book in my Medieval History class. It's not a thorough book, but that would be almost (if not entirely) impossible given the fact that Cecilia Penifader was a peasant and peasants' lives were irrelevant and unimportant to the rest of medieval society. Still, the book gives you a good understanding of what life would have been like for this particular woman in terms of work, religion, family, dealing with manorial courts and the harsh existence for peasants.

I found the book interesting. It's an easy read and though the author has to make inferences about Penifader's life, it is a well written book that at least gives some "face" to the typically unknown peasant. Bennett (the author) uses records from the courts and other written records of the times to at least give a good outline of Penifader's life.

cecilia who?.......2005-04-11

This book was written to give the reader a sense of what life was like in the Middle Ages and it did, however, the author tried to use the life of Cecilia Penifader as an example-bad choice. There is very little information about this woman (especially to write a book over)and it was a guessing game at what she did or did not do. Without Cecila and her family information this book probably would have been 10 pages shorter and still given the reader a look into life in a medeival town.

Price is nuts.......2004-01-30

Its a good book, but they're nuts to think a 120 page paperback is worth 28 dollars. I was going to assign this to my class, but no way at that price.

An Excellent Primer for Medieval History.......2000-10-04

I recently read this book for a history class and have to say that the book is very enjoyable. It's brevity and clarity make it a great introduction to medieval history. Cecilia Penifader was a well-to-do peasant woman living in Brigstock, England in the early 14th century. Bennett uses Cecilia to introduce the reader to all aspects of peasant life in this time period. There are in-depth studies of economics, religion, living conditions, and gender roles, as well as other interesting facets of peasant life. Bennett also makes sure to include some interesting little tidbits, such as the role of contraception during this period.

One of the best things to be said about this book is how Bennett highlights terms that the reader is most likely to not be familiar with. These words are listed in a handy glossary in the back of the book. Most people aren't familiar with terms such as heliot, so this addition to the book is very helpful. As mentioned above, the brevity and clarity of the book go a long way to making the text more enjoyable. The book foregoes footnotes and endnotes, which would certainly help the non-scholars who can't stand wading through tons of citations. There are also some nice diagrams that help the reader visualize various aspects of peasant life.

The lack of footnotes and endnotes is a problem for the historian and student, such as myself. I wouldn't go so far as the other reviewer here and pan the entire book, but that reviewer certainly has a point. Bennett also relies on inference more than she probably should. Although her deductions seem sound, her conclusions, backed up with more evidence and properly cited, would have been much appreciated.

I think this is an excellent survey text that would make a nice addition to any library. After reading the book, the reader can readily picture Cecilia and feel as if they almost know her, and any book that can accomplish that is always worth a read.

Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Published for the Institute of Early AME)
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Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Published for the Institute of Early AME)
John J. McCusker
Manufacturer: University of N. Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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