Jack Goody is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge from 1973 to 1985. He has written extensively on the family, memory, ritual, and literacy, in a wide variety of regional and historical contexts. His many books include Death, Property and the Ancestors (1962), The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977), The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (1983), The East and West (1996), Representations and Contradictions (Blackwell, 1997) and Food and Love (1999).

• Series Editors Preface. Preface.1. The Beginnings.2. The Heritage of Greece and Rome.3. The Coming of Christianity.4. The German Lands.5. The European Patterns and Medieval Regimes.6. Women, Children and Fathers in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.7. Dowry and the Rights of Women.8. The Differences.9. Proto and Full Industrialization.10. Modernization and the Family: The Theories.11. The Contemporary Family in Practice.Notes.Glossary.Bibliography.Selected Reading.Index.

"Goody's writing is always focused, concise to the point of economy, and never driven by a particular ideology or by political correctness. This is a book that stimulates the reader to take a long view of the family and one that counsels wisely against making generalisations and jumping to simple conclusions about the past." The Times Higher Education Supplement "Jack Goody has a well-deserved reputation for pithy analysis and breathtaking international comparisons ... The book is filled with seasoned insights and shrewd observations." Population and Development Review "Highly recommended for those who seek a broad, if polemical, history of the family." CHOICE