The Family in the Western World: From the Black Death to the Industrial Age reprint Edition

"Gottlieb has done the reading public a great service by distilling the immense body of research on Western society's family structure into an eminently readable and intriguing narrative. Her clear synthesis helps us picture the past more accurately, free of the wishfulness of myth and the concocted ideals about allegedly 'traditional' families and family values....An invaluable resource."--Booklist

"A well-researched and readable study of the family in the Western World....Overturns popular myths about families from an earlier time."--Publishers Weekly

"I enjoyed every minute of reading this book, and I was impressed on almost every page by Gottlieb's skill in sorting through a vast and complex literature....It is a book in the best traditions of history--a book that makes an arcane scholarly endeavor accessible to the general reader. In many senses, this is a real triumph."--Judith Bennett, University of North Carolina, author of Women in the Medieval English Countryside

"Nowhere does one find so much interesting information about the early modern family pulled together with such clarity and fairness and presented in such a way as to be of interest to scholar and layperson alike. Ms. Gottlieb elucidates the larger issues over which scholars argue and she tells the story of the family in an appealing way."--Steven Ozment, Harvard University

"Lead[s] students and the general reader through the minefields of historical controversy that encircle the discipline. This Gottlieb does with elegance and aplomb....A seductively clear guide to familial experience in the early modern period."--Times Literary Supplement

"The author's superb writing style and the book's organization make this accessible to a wide audience."--John Rosser, KLIATT

"Gottlieb has done the reading public a great service by distilling the immense body of research on Western society's family structure into an eminently readable and intriguing narrative. Her clear synthesis helps us picture the past more accurately, free of the wishfulness of myth and the concocted ideals about allegedly 'traditional' families and family values....An invaluable resource."--Booklist

"A well-researched and readable study of the family in the Western World....Overturns popular myths about families from an earlier time."--Publishers Weekly

"I enjoyed every minute of reading this book, and I was impressed on almost every page by Gottlieb's skill in sorting through a vast and complex literature....It is a book in the best traditions of history--a book that makes an arcane scholarly endeavor accessible to the general reader. In many senses, this is a real triumph."--Judith Bennett, University of North Carolina, author of Women in the Medieval English Countryside

"Nowhere does one find so much interesting information about the early modern family pulled together with such clarity and fairness and presented in such a way as to be of interest to scholar and layperson alike. Ms. Gottlieb elucidates the larger issues over which scholars argue and she tells the story of the family in an appealing way."--Steven Ozment, Harvard University

"Lead[s] students and the general reader through the minefields of historical controversy that encircle the discipline. This Gottlieb does with elegance and aplomb....A seductively clear guide to familial experience in the early modern period."--Times Literary Supplement

"The author's superb writing style and the book's organization make this accessible to a wide audience."--John Rosser, KLIATT