Snooks and McDonald have compiled an unequalled new interpretation of the Domesday Book, the ancient work containing detailed and comprehensive statistics on ownership, income, and resources of almost every manor of Norman England in 1086.

This fascinating study uses Domesday book data and Management Science methods to examine manorial production efficiency in Medieval Essex in 1086. This book reveals unexpected facts about economic history, and is a remarkable contribution to economic history and medieval studies. It will be of great interest to economists, management scientists, medievalists and anyone involved with Domesday studies.

New light is shed on the motives and objectives for the compiling of the still-mysterious Domesday Book, revolutionising our understanding of the period. The Domesday Book is one of our major sources for a crucial period of English history; yet it remains difficult to interpret. This provocative new book proposes a complete re-assessment, with profound implications for our understanding of the society and economy of medieval England. In particular, it overturns the general assumption that the Domesday inquest was a comprehensive survey of lords and their lands, and so tells us about the economic underpinning of power in the late eleventh century; rather, it suggests that in 1086 matters of taxation and service were at issue and data were collected to illuminate these concerns. What emerges from this is that Domesday Book tells us less about a real economy and those who sustained it than a tributary one, with much of the wealth of England being omitted. The source, then, is not the transparent datum that social and economic historians would like it to be. Inreturn, however, the book offers a richer understanding of late eleventh-century England in its own terms; and elucidates many long-standing conundrums of the Domesday Book itself. DAVID ROFFE is an honorary research fellow at Sheffield University. He has written widely on Domesday Book and edited five volumes of the Alecto County Edition of the text.

A survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, with a history of its estates. The early history of the religious community at Glastonbury has been the subject of much speculation and imaginative writing, but there are few sources which genuinely further our knowledge of Glastonbury Abbey in the Anglo-Saxonperiod. This has resulted in a lack of serious historical research and hence the neglect of an important ecclesiastical establishment. This study brings together the evidence of royal and episcopal grants of land and combines it with material from Domesday Book, to produce a survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, and an analysis of the history of its Anglo-Saxon estates. Although there is too little data to formulate a complete account of the Abbey's early landholdings, the surviving evidence, collected together here, outlines a history for each place named in connection with the pre-Conquest religious house; in addition, each case helps to establish an overall framework for the life-cycle of the Anglo-Saxon estate, building on our understanding of actual conditions of tenure and of the various fortunes ecclesiastical land might experience. LESLEY ABRAMS is Lecturer in History, Brasenose College, and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University.

`A series which is a model of its kind.' EDMUND KING, HISTORY The latest volume in the series concentrates, as always, on the half century before and the century after 1066, with papers which have many interconnections and range across different kinds of history. There is a particular focuson church history, with contributions on an Anglo-Saxon archiepiscopal manual, architecture and liturgy in post-Conquest Lincolnshire, Anglo-Norman cathedral chapters, and twelfth-century views of the tenth-century monastic reform. Other topics considered include social history (the Anglo-Norman family), gender (William of Malmesbury's representation of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester), and politics (the sheriffs of Northumberland and Cumberland 1170-1185). The volume is completed with articles on Domesday Book and the post-Domesday Evesham Abbey surveys, and a double paper on land tenure and royal patronage. Contributors: STEPHEN BAXTER, JOHN BLAIR, HOWARD CLARKE, TRACEY-ANN COOPER, HUGH DOHERTY, PAUL EVERSON, DAVID STOCKER, KIRSTEN FENTON, VANESSA KING, JOHN MOORE, NICOLA ROBERTSON, DAVID ROFFE

This celebrated account of society and economy in England from the first Anglo-Saxon settlements in the fifth century to the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest has been a standard text since it first appeared in 1962. This long-awaited second edition incorporates the fruits of 30 years of subsequent scholarship. It has been revised expanded and entirely reset.

Was the Industrial Revolution Necessary? takes an innovative look at this much studied subject. The contributors ask new questions, explore new issues and use new data in order to stimulate interest and elicit new responses. By looking at it from such previously unexplored angles the book brings a new understanding to the Industrial Revolution and opens a new debate.

A sweeping history of the full range of human labor Few authors are able to write cogently in both the scientific and the economic spheres. Even fewer possess the intellectual scope needed to address science and economics at a macro as well as a micro level. But Paul Cockshott, using the dual lenses of Marxist economics and technological advance, has managed to pull off a stunningly acute critical perspective of human history, from pre-agricultural societies to the present. In How the World Works, Cockshott connects scientific, economic, and societal strands to produce a sweeping and detailed work of historical analysis. This book will astound readers of all backgrounds and ages; it will also will engage scholars of history, science, and economics for years to come.

One of the most stimulating and original contributions to Conquest studies, covering the period 950-1086.

Includes The economic foundations of medieval society, The rise of a money economy, The chronology of labour services and The charters of the villeins.