This book consists of a collection of papers about people's images of home. The volume is divided into 4 parts: Changing images of the ideal home; Betwixt and between: homes in transition; Anxieties and risks: homes in danger; and Changing perceptions of home. The first part, changing images of the ideal home, focuses mainly on British homes and British attitudes towards home. Much of the remaining material, however, could easily be generalized to cover Western attitudes towards housing and home. Tony Chapman's paper "You've got him well trained': the negotiation of roles in the domestic sphere is a particularly well-done exploration into sources of social attitudes towards sharing housework. Overall, this book provides some extremely interesting vantage points of many different aspects of domestic life, especially in 21st century England. Anthropologists, sociologists, and feminists will all find something of interest in this book.

"Pagen" [sic] is misspelled in the Beowulf introduction. Henry II is described in the introduction as having ruled from 1154 to 1177, when in actuality, he ruled until his death in 1189. The more I read, the less I trust what I'm reading. I recommend M. H. Abrams' Norton anthology instead.

otherwise its a great collection of texts. 3 books too.

This is an excellent anthology, with generous selections, lively introductions, and beautifully reproduced color plates. Though published on "bible paper," there is very little bleed-through. It is an splendid alternative to the Norton Anthology, not only for its ample contexts sections and for its loving attention to both canonical and new writers (especially women writers of the Renaissance), but also for its favoring of complete works--More's Utopia, Sidney's Apology, etc. I've been using IB this semester, and though there are, as the (I think excessively) negative reviewer notes below, occasional errors, these are not unusual in massive endeavors. An old game in the 1950s used to be to send grad students in search of errors and typos in the standard literary critical books of the day. I'm sure these will be cleaned up. For now the book works especially well for "survey" courses and for upper-level, specialized courses, when supplemented by another paperback or two, or course packets.