The Lara Family

Amply documented, cogently argued, and beautifully written, this book represents an important contribution to the history of Reconquest Spain.
-- Simon Barton, University of Exeter

It is a valuable and significant addition to scholarship on the medieval Iberian nobility and should prove useful for students of the history of nobility, monarchy, and power across medieval Europe.
-- Adam J. Kosto, Columbia University

Very specifically focused on local events, filled with discussions of the distinction between tenancies and patrimonies, this is not a book for the general reader, but serious students of Spanish history will find it informative and cogently argued.
-- Publishers Weekly

This interesting published dissertation examines one of the most powerful aristocratic families of Castile during the central Middle Ages. The Laras developed their wealth, power, and territorial acquisitions in approximate parallel with a similar expansion of the monarchy in Leon and Castile, all owing a good deal to reconquest expansion against the Muslim south. Doubleday surveys this familial rise with a generation-by-generation account of the family's accumulation of patrimonies and tenancies acquired by basking in the light of royal favoritism.
-- J. F. Powers Choice

It is all too rare a pleasure to be able to review a book with unstinting praise and to recommend it without the slightest reservation. In a brief compass, the author surveys the history of what became one of the most powerful noble houses of the kingdom of Castile, from its emergence from obscurity in the reign of Alfonso VI (1072-1109) to its effective extinction in 1352...Although the book focuses on only one noble house, it also succeeds in providing a masterly sketch of the political dynamics of Castile in these centuries...This book is the first detailed modern study of the Lara family, which makes an important contribution to the wider question of relations between crown and nobility in Castile in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and at the same time helps to render more accessible the wider political and economic history of the kingdom in the same period; it is also a pleasure to read.
-- Roger Collins History