Hailed as a pioneering work of total history" when it was published in France in 1966, Le Roy Laduries volume combines elements of human geography, historical demography, economic history, and folk culture in a broad depiction of a great agrarian cycle, lasting from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It describes the conflicts and contradictions of a traditional peasant society in which the rise in population was not matched by increases in wealth and food production. It presents us with a great study of rural history, an analysis of economic change and a description of a societyin movement that has few equals.-- Washington Post Book WorldIt is without any doubt one of the most important, if not the most important, monograph of the French Annales school of socio-economichistorians written in the last decade. -- Canadian Historical Review
