WOW, this is some book; one to study. It took me a while to read it, and I am going to do it again. What scholarship; I am amazed that some one can assimilate so much, and synthesize such a broad prospective. If you want to get a picture of what happened at the end of the Western Empire, this is the book for you. My only criticism is that Wickham is not a Hemingway. It is pretty slow going for us Americans. There are lots of parenthical expressions, in the middle of a sentence; and colons and semicolons to join related, but independent, thoughts. I am not a professional historian, and I do not understand some of his arguments. Large scale systems of exchange broke down, and in general the aristocrats became poorer, and less powerful. Apparently the peasants were not taxed as much, or contolled as much. Should'nt this result in a more flowering in an economy? He writes there was a decrease in population, but none, or little productive land was taken out of production. Did everybody work harder; producing the same amount as when the large scale systems of echange were operating, even though they had no place to sell it? Did they decide to spend more time with their kids, and only produce what they needed, even if they were not making efficient use of the land? I am sure there is a simple explanation. That is why this is a book for me to study.

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