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Rating: 
Summary: Not a book on marriage counseling
Review: This book has been mis-categorized. It is NOT a book on sociology or social science, but one on history; specifically, the history of human sexuality. This is a collection of articles, covering the period from Ancient Greece and Rome to Byzantium and the Latin West, and it includes a range of topics which all cluster around the subject of marriage. Students of medieval sexuality will be happy to learn of a new articles by a number of heavy hitters in the field: James Brundage produced a new piece on "Implied Consent to Intercourse"; Suzanne Wemple provided a short piece on Germanic women that can serve as a companion to her book-length work; John Baldwin included a summary of his book on the range of discourse on sexuality found in 13th century France. In addition, to round out an otherwise often neglected field on Byzantium, Laiou offers an outline on sex, consent, and coercion in the East.
As a student of medieval sexuality and an instructor of undergraduates on the topic, I'm always hunting for new material that is accessible to the more casual student while still produced in a manner that meets rigorous academic standards of accuracy. I was incredibly pleased to find this text, and plan to use several articles in my fall syllabus from Laiou's compilation. For those more generally interested in the topic, none of these pieces is written in a manner that would close out a more generalized public interest, and each provides a wonderful bibliography for follow-up study and research.
Rating:
Summary: Not a book on marriage counseling
Review: This book has been mis-categorized. It is NOT a book on sociology or social science, but one on history; specifically, the history of human sexuality. This is a collection of articles, covering the period from Ancient Greece and Rome to Byzantium and the Latin West, and it includes a range of topics which all cluster around the subject of marriage. Students of medieval sexuality will be happy to learn of a new articles by a number of heavy hitters in the field: James Brundage produced a new piece on "Implied Consent to Intercourse"; Suzanne Wemple provided a short piece on Germanic women that can serve as a companion to her book-length work; John Baldwin included a summary of his book on the range of discourse on sexuality found in 13th century France. In addition, to round out an otherwise often neglected field on Byzantium, Laiou offers an outline on sex, consent, and coercion in the East.
As a student of medieval sexuality and an instructor of undergraduates on the topic, I'm always hunting for new material that is accessible to the more casual student while still produced in a manner that meets rigorous academic standards of accuracy. I was incredibly pleased to find this text, and plan to use several articles in my fall syllabus from Laiou's compilation. For those more generally interested in the topic, none of these pieces is written in a manner that would close out a more generalized public interest, and each provides a wonderful bibliography for follow-up study and research.
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