Remembering Peasants
A Personal History of a Vanished World
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Remembering Peasants
Narrated by:
Philip Bird
Buy Now for £19.09
-
Narrated by:
-
Philip Bird
-
By:
-
Patrick Joyce
About this listen
*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice*
A landmark history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity, but is rapidly vanishing in our time.
“What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support.”
For over the past century and a half, and most notably over the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life—the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago—is disappearing. In this vital history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life. In one sense, this is a global history, ambitious in scope, taking us from the urbanization of the early 19th century to the present day. But more specifically, Joyce’s focus is the demise of the European peasantry and of their rites, traditions, and beliefs.
Alongside this he brings in stories of individuals as well as places, including his own family, and looks at how peasants and their ways of life have been memorialized in photographs, literature, and in museums. Joyce explores a people whose voice is vastly underrepresented, and is usually mediated through others, in human history—and now peasants are vanishing in one of the greatest historical transformations of our time.
Written with the skill and authority of a great historian, Remembering Peasants is a “first-class work” (Kirkus Reviews), a richly complex and passionate history written with exquisite care. It is also deeply resonant, as Joyce shines a light on people whose knowledge of the land is being irretrievably lost during our critical time of climate crisis and the rise of industrial agriculture. Enlightening, timely, and vitally important, this book commemorates an extraordinary culture whose impact on history—and the future—remains profoundly relevant.
Critic reviews
"Narrator Philip Bird mirrors the production’s best qualities, its sensitivity and intelligence, and lets its essential sadness emerge unobtrusively. His deft narration softens the frustrations of a text that can lose clarity by wandering among times and cultures. Especially in the reflective latter sections, his performance is so effortlessly attuned to the book’s meaning, so subtly expressive, that it’s easy to forget he’s not the author. The effect is both engaging and moving."
No reviews yet