French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics by: Marc Bloch
Hardcover. Berkeley, University of California, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. 258 pages, b&w illustrations. Written in 1929, when Marc Bloch was 42 years young, page after page of this book infects with the exhuberance of a difficult project turning out well. Bloch chose to write a history of the social impact of economic events on everyday life. Back then that meant to take a long and winding road through uncharted territory. For documentary evidence on how the common people lived by working the land - on "oxen, wheeled ploughs or crop rotations" - was scarce and much of it had to be drawn from neighbouring disciplines. Considered a classic in it's field, this is the first US edition, translated from the French by Janet Sondheimer. Dust jacket spine faded, otherwise a clean, tight copy.
