People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies

People and Power in Byzantium: An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies. Alexander Kazhdan, Giles Constable. 1982. 240 pages. This book was lent to me by a friend back in Minnesota. It fills in a lot of gaps for me. It frames issues in context rather then as stand alone. The book was written by people trained in the Marxist school, yet they have been westernized enough to not be constantly trotting out the Marxist dogma. The only real remnant is in a chapter on the economy and a focus on the proles. In fact I applaud their notion of telling the story of your everyday Byzantine person. It speaks well of how the Byzantines saw themselves, how others saw them and of the gap between reality and ideal. Some of the cultural prejudices ... I am much more a Roman then a Byzantine, but then I knew that. I had had questions about some Church/Theological stuff and this book provided the context of the events outside of the faith and also did a very good ... actually excellent job of explaining it from the Orthodox view (both in practice and in projection). I had to send the book back but eventually I will purchase my own copy.