Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe

by Steven E. Ozment

Book Overview

Rescuing the premodern family from the grim picture many historians have given us of life in early Europe, Ancestors offers a major reassessment of a crucial aspect of European history--and tells a story of age-old domesticity inextricably linked, and surprisingly similar, to our own.

An elegant summa on family life in Europe past, this compact and powerful book extends and completes a project begun with Steven Ozment's When...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674004841
• ISBN13: 9780674004849
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Well-written, well-argued, humorous, beautiful book

I don't think I've ever given a book 5 stars before, but this one requires it. I'd love to give a copy to every new parent I know for the "Parental Advice" chapter alone. (It should also be required reading in every Child Development course.) Not only is it a delightful read, the hardcover edition (unquestionably worth the extra $) is classically typeset and bound in such a way that you feel as though you should have discovered it in the corner of an old bookstore."Because history is the only deep, empirical record of human behavior we have," writes Ozment, "it is imperitive that new generations on the brink of an unknown future possess the fairest and most accurate information about preceeding ones." Ozment has sifted through the volumes of historical study to present this eloquent yet very succint (I read it in a week) work of verbal art. His narrative is judicial and far from overbearing; he lets the centuries speak for themselves, in their own words--the mark of a wise writer.