The most recommended books about serfdom

There was no such thing as YA when I was the right age for it. I went straight from the school stories of Enid Blyton to bonkbusters, bodice-rippers, and sweeping historical sagas the size of building bricks. The Suffolk trilogy was always my favourite of those, because its sweep was so stupendous. (Book one opens in the 1300s and Book three ends well into the twentieth century.) The Town House world is so physical, so brutal, so strange to modern eyes. The food, the clothes – my God, the plumbing! – the relentless scrabble to survive for all but the very rich, make this novel and, to some extent, its two sequels a completely immersive read. I particularly love that Lofts pays as much attention to the lowly folk who keep the place going as to the owners of the manor house. 

I find this book highly interesting because it tells the story of capitalism from a cosmopolitan angle. It focuses on the history of market capitalism from the second half of the 19th century to the Great War. It was during this period that capitalism triumphed and swept around the world. Eventually, it led to globalization in many spheres, which causes problems today.

Sassoon explains how and why Britain became a world power and how other nations quickly caught up. It contains some 20 Tables with economic data illustrating this global triumph. One of the most interesting aspects of the book, from my point of view, is that the state has always had a crucial role to play in order ‘to tame the beast.’ This intervention includes a ‘set of legislative institutions regulating competition.’ The book is well-researched, informative, and a delight to read.

My second true love where speculative fiction universes are concerned is undoubtedly the Apprentice Adept series. The way it so deftly blends fantasy and science fiction, the iconic, unforgettable characters and concepts, and the, frankly, epic way the story evolves and eventually resolves absolutely blew my mind as a kid, and I’ve found revisiting it as an adult just as satisfying and enjoyable.

I found this work to be a complex and nuanced introduction to the much-debated and poorly understood intellectual revolution that was the Enlightenment.

Although the book lies outside my own area of academic expertise, I could easily follow its sweeping narrative as it moved through both familiar and obscure writers and thinkers. Few subjects escape its attention, and the volume is particularly strong in exploring the complex relationship between Enlightenment rationalism and Christianity. 

I think Scott is one of the most creative social scientists working today, and this book is probably his strongest work.

Scott flips the script and focuses attention on the strategies subordinates use to navigate and deal with the power of their social superiors. He has great faith in the abilities of ordinary people to mock and hoodwink the powerful and to create for themselves little refuges from kings, bosses, and overlords.

I go back to this book all the time because it is a treasure trove of wonderful anecdotes, too.

This book is one of two of Lambert’s books that I reread often and find myself reflecting on long after finishing it (the other is Mind Over Water, which I wholly recommend too!)

But Shadow Work deserves its place in my top of the year canon because of its clear-eyed, damning look at the many ways we human beings willingly donate our time to businesses by doing the “self-service” things—like self-check at the supermarket, or “please listen carefully because our menu has changed” customer service calling systems—that used to require real human interaction.

This book is a wakeup call and an excellent read about the often-blurred lines between our leisure and our work.

It was the biggest mystery of Black literature—and this author figured it out. Who wrote The Bondswoman’s Tale—a recently discovered novel—the first novel written by an African American woman? But why should I care? Why not leave this mystery alone? Instead of just revealing the identity of the author, though, this stunning biography asks us about how women’s lives, particularly those of women who survived captivity, might be different. 

Hecimovich shows us, though, that this book, “Hannah Crafts” (a pen name), writes of happy reunions between a mother and daughter; she avoids depictions of sexual abuse. She draws on her own experiences of living in captivity but changes them enough to hide her identity. I didn’t expect, though, for her own real life to be filled with more drama and pain than her novel! You don’t need to read the book to understand and come to love the true… show more.

One of the most disquieting things about medieval peasants for me is that many of them were not free.

Some were outright slaves, particularly at the very beginning and the very end of the Middle Ages, but by 1100, most ‘unfree’ peasants were serfs. Although not a commodity to be bought or sold like slaves, serfs did unpaid labor and suffered serious limitations on their liberty, like the inability to move or marry at will.

Many historians have written on the medieval transition from slavery to serfdom (and back again), but what I like about Rio’s book is her attention to the variety of forms that ‘unfreedom’ could take and to how and why people might lose or gain freedom in the centuries after the fall of Rome and its slave system.