The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age

Many books rated 5 stars do not deserve them, but this does. I first read it as an undergraduate, and have continued to draw on it in grad school. Summarizing much of the early research by the Cambridge Group on Population and Social Structure, it helped inspire two generations of work on such topics as family history, demography and famine. Quantitative social history is now so well-established as part of the mainstream that it is hard to grasp how innovative Laslett's book was when it first appeared in 1965. Though some of its conclusions have been challenged, its status as a readable classic remains secure. Its generational peers include N. Cohn, "Pursuit of the Millenium;" E. Le Roy Ladurie, "Peasants of Languedoc;" E.P. Thompson, "Making of the English Working Class;" and various works by Fernand Braudel. For an interesting current exploration of several of Laslett's themes in England and Japan, see A. MacFarlane, "The Savage Wars of Peace."

This is one of those rare books that can actually change your whole view of the world. Despite being written in a somewhat dry manner, with exhaustively researched data listed and explained, piece by piece, a glimpse of pre-industrial society emerges that does not necessarily conform to our stereotyped view of "traditional" society and family. In some respects, this book offers hope for our own times by putting our problems in perspective. For example, we often decry the high rate of divorce and remarriage seen in today's Western societies and compare today's fractured families to the "stable" families of long ago. The information in this book reveals that in pre-industrial England, at least, families were splintered by death and desertion at a rate that approaches our contemporary rate of divorce. Rather than being a modern source of stress, remarriage and stepparents are a long-standing tradition in our culture.