Hailed as a pioneering work of

      "total history" when it was published in France in 1966, Le Roy Ladurie's

      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 society

in movement that has few equals."

-- Washington Post Book World

"It is without any doubt one of the most important, if not the most important, monograph of the French Annales school of socio-economic

historians written in the last decade." -- Canadian Historical Review