peasants, townsmen, wage-earners, and paupers, and examines how they obtained and spent their incomes. Did the aristocracy practice conspicuous consumption? Did the peasants really starve? The book focuses on the varying fortunes of different social groups in the inflation of the thirteenth century, the crises of the fourteenth, and the apparent depression of the fifteenth. Dr. Dyer explains the changes in terms of the dynamics of a social and economic system subjected to stimuli and stresses.

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