«Often derided as inherently conservative, servile and unimaginative, the peasants of the English middle ages are given centre stage in this significant work by one of the foremost authorities on the social and economic history of the medieval period. [...] It is Dyer's deep familiarity with the documents of his study area that give the everyday people of the medieval period a voice. In this work we agree with Dyer that peasants helped create the modern world, and that their contributions deserve much wider recognition.»

Andrew Margetts, Agricultural History Review

«This book is not just the fruit of a lifetime of wide-ranging research, but reflects an enduring curiosity about human experience, the insatiable desire to explore and keep learning, and that in turn makes it possible for Dyer to explain how peasants made history.»

Peter L. Larson, Speculum 99/2

«Dyer's study is not perhaps a book for the nonspecialist to read cover-to-cover, but it provides a wealth of detail on peasant life in England in the later middle ages arranged by topic.»

Kathleen Thompson, BGAS

«Peasants Making History ably conveys the dignity and humanity of the many thousands of men and women who lived, worked, and died in the West Midlands countryside throughout the later middle ages.»

Murray Andrews, Worcestershire Recorder

«Peasants Making History is a thoroughly humane study which sets a high bar for future work in medieval regional and social history.»

Stephen Mileson, Oxfordshire Victoria County History, Medieval Archaeology vol 67.1

«Piers Plowman's constant negotiations between multiple discourses and communities present conflicting and probably self-conflicted perspectives, but scholars of Piers Plowman, like those concerned with any aspect of medievalEnglish culture, as well as those studying peasant culture of any period, can learn much of value from Dyer's wide and penetrating examination of west-midland medieval peasants' lives, which merged into and helped create wider culturalspheres with which the records and literature allow us to be so much more familiar.»

Andrew Galloway, The Yearbook of LanglandStudies