The Great Cat Massacre
And Other Episodes in French Cultural History

Given the peculiarities of the Irish educational system, at the end of 10th grade there was a forced choice between physics and history, so my formal study of history ended when I was 14. I was happy to be rid of it at the time - my brain did fine with analytical stuff like science and languages, bu......more

Most history of the early modern period written more than a generation ago was what Robert Darnton identifies as “top-down” history: it is the history of royalty, nobles, and the intellectual elites whose ideas largely defined the times. But this contribution, along with Natalie Zemon Davis’ “The Re......more

This is a re-read, I read it before in college as a beautiful example of historical social research/anthropology. I loved the part where the author says that whenever we're dealing with old documents and encounter something we don't really understand, a joke or inside nod to something which seems to......more

Unconvincing and judgmental. It promises an insight into people's mentalities in 18th c. France, complete with a "Great Cat Massacre", for "the general reading public, as well as for scholars". Unfortunately, while the first chapter was fun and the second was interesting, the book went downhill from......more

This is an enterprise in ethnographic history. The author,a historian, borrows from anthropology in an attempt to reconstruct the view of the world of the 18th century Frenchman. It focuses on different documents originating from different environments so as to present the worldview from several per......more