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Historical The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 by David Carpenter $18.00 / Penguin / 2004 The Struggle for Mastery is an excellent example of that redoubtable academic genre—the Grand Synthesis. Usually written by a respectable academic, such books incorporate the work of generations of scholars into one massive statement, and author David Carpenter's masterful volume is no exception. Each generation must, however, add something to this narrative, and the difference between earlier works on the history of Britain and this tome is the inclusion of recent scholarship on whether Britain was formed by its Anglo-Norman rulers from the 12th century on, rulers who centralized control over central England and pushed outwards or, as some recent scholarship suggests, was due to their being pulled into internecine conflict on the Welsh and Scottish borders and in the Irish marches. Readers might argue with Carpenter's claims regarding Britian's nationalism, cultural assimilation, and its multiple identities (namely that a coherent British-English identity and polity developed within a few generations after the Conquest) but on the whole, this book is an impressive piece of scholarship. Suitable for both the academic and general reader, The Struggle for Mastery is a masterful look at how Britain was formed from 1066 to 1284. —Ken Mondschein

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