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