March global nonfiction: These six recently published books capture the many moods of human history

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Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World, Patrick Joyce

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 memorialised 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...

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