This collection brings together thirteen chapters by nine authors on the rural history of the century or so after the Black Death. It is divided into three sections: part one deals mainly with issues surrounding the prices of agricultural products; part two with the evidence of production provided by tithes; and part three with tenants and patterns of landholding. The book is nicely put together with introductory and concluding chapters drawing out the broader themes, and a chapter introducing each section, all authored by Britnell, Dodds or both. Chapter two by Britnell on the phases of economic change indicated by prices, and chapter five by Dodds on output and productivity would both be worth recommending to undergraduates as helpful overviews. There is a consolidated bibliography and an index.

Eight chapters present new research. Schofield offers an excellent overview of the recent literature on harvest failure and grain prices, but his examination of wheat prices from Durham between 1350 and 1500 proves inconclusive. Gemmill examines the regulation of the corn market in Aberdeen as evidence of interaction between town and countryside. The section on tithes contains two of the strongest chapters. Swanson provides an expert introduction to English tithe returns which, as he and Dodds point out, have been sorely neglected by economic historians. He examines the collection, appropriation, leasing, and marketing of tithes, and outlines the surviving documentation. Dodds uses tithe data to compare agricultural production in the period 1370 to 1450 in England, France and Castile and identifies widely divergent patterns. If levels of agricultural production are basically a proxy for demographic trends in this period, this raises important questions about why the trends differed so widely. Hare's chapter in the same section is less wide ranging but nonetheless offers the important conclusion that lords and tenants grew roughly the same crops in fourteenth-century Wessex. Larson's chapter on ‘Rural Transformation in Northern England’ is a highlight of the volume. It uses evidence of conflict in the court rolls to examine the changing nature of village communities in Durham in the fifty years after the Black Death. The pre-Black Death situation of cooperation and consensus was maintained for two decades until violent conflict flared up in the 1370s, before being replaced by the dominance of a new tenant elite and a more individualist outlook. The chapters by Harris and Mullan make less of an impact. Harris’ case study of ‘waste’ in County Durham's Spennymoor finds, as we might expect, that the land that was last to be taken into cultivation before the Black Death was the first to be abandoned afterwards. Mullan's study of accumulation and polarisation on the Winchester Bishopric estates presents some wonderful data, but needs to explain it more clearly and make reference to the extensive literature that already exists on the land market in this period.

Despite efforts in the conclusion to draw out issues of local, regional, national and international dynamics in economic change, it is a pity the collection as a whole shies away from confronting the larger issues about long term paths of economic development, demographic determinism, and the balance of power between lords and tenants which makes agrarian change in this period so significant.