His course in Harvard's Core program, offered in 1988, 1990, 1993, 2001, 2003, became a book entitled The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government.
[12] His edition of the Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia, led to his book Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200, which explored peasants' voices from Catalan villagers revealing their grievances against the Count of Barcelona's agents, shedding light on ambitions to power amongst non-nobles in castles, as Margaretta S. Handhe stated, "Using excellent prose and interpretive skill, Bisson has rescued these peasants from anonymity and given their sufferings a life beyond their mortal existence.
"[13] Of his latest book, The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 vols., Sean McGlynn wrote, "Bisson's masterful new edition is clearly to be considered as the new gold standard.
"[14] Bisson's article "The 'Feudal Revolution" defended Marc Bloch and Georges Duby, French historians who had demonstrated a massive societal transformation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when lords, fiefs, and vassals multiplied.
This entailed a breakdown of public order, the rise of new lordships amongst the men of castles in the quest of nobility, the loss of civic or official identities, and while he had first studied precedents for parliamentary representation in the thirteenth century, his later books and teaching stressed the importance of public interest as a new and debatable concept essential to government, however minimal, and first perceptible in Catalonia and England in the years from about 1180 to 1215.