Thompson's book is THE ground-breaking work of social history for our century, pioneering in the "history of everyday life" (also taken up by Foucault, de Certeau, Davis, etc.); the history of working people; and the consideration of culture in the past. Unlike most other social history it is also brilliantly written and accessible. Buy it.
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strial revolution.E.P. Thompson's magnum opus is a real classic. No serious student of social history should omit reading it! As a history student, I had read it more than 25 years ago. When I reread large parts of it, recently, I noticed - with the life experience acquired since that time - that the book is an even finer gem than I remembered.It is clear that the author shows a certain bias in favour of the "losers" of the...
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This is an extraordinary book and still hold its power to suprise and challenge the reader. Its structure would suggest that its really a series of essays each of which uses some remarkable research. However such a perspective would not do justice to its underlying thesis -that the English working class was not the sterile output of economic forces but actively engaged through aspiration and struggle in its own making...
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I can't possibly do justice to EP Thompson is a short review - I'll just say that this is book is revolutionary and infinately influential. It is the book most cited *ever* by historians. Thompson's definition of class - that class is made within the day-to-day lives of people, and that classes only exist in relationship to one another - has become the paradigm for understanding how societies function. This book revolutionized...
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