What an excellent account of people that are in the shadows. Our society is built on the backs of people in this book. In books we see small examples of people hidden in the shadows but this is an entire book devoted to those that are perpetually unseen and unheard.

Interesting and occasionally frustrating, a baggy book about a class of people that left really no documents behind them other than what someone personally experienced or some curator decided should be preserved. Joyce focuses on three specific areas of Europe: Ireland, where his family is from, Poland and Italy. The subtitle does say it is a 'personal' history, which accounts to some degree for its bagginess. In the absence of documentary history to refer to, the author takes the opportunity for philosophical ruminations about ideas like the nature of time for peasants and other aspects of their worldview. It's somewhat unfortunate that he does not take France into his scope, it seems to me there might be more preserved material and also there was at least one book written about the seventeenth century peasantry of France. However, the book would have then been quite a lot bigger.

He takes pains to point out that we ought not idealize the often nasty, brutish, and short lives of these peasants, but he kind of does anyway. I mean, yes, it's true, we are less in tune with the nature of the land and the seasons and have less of a relationship to the earth, to our cost. But we are also not losing 60% of every family of children to diphtheria and polio before the age of five, or dying in huge numbers of smallpox and the plague, so ... ?? And it's hard to avoid the feeling sometimes that there is a little of the "noble savage" going on.

The most interesting chapter involved his visits to museums of peasant culture in the three nations he covers - how the information in them is presented, how it is and is not representative of the lives of the people themselves, how it is commoditized for modern tourists. The implications of this seem the most sinister in Poland, where the sites of many death camps are virtually unmarked and the museums about peasants talk up how Polish peasants helped Jews - one way Poland is trying to flee and deny its role in the holocaust is to idealize its peasants. Visitors are discouraged or even prevented from asking any questions by the strict time limits on visits to the museum and the way guides rush them along - sounds like the guides in Russian palaces in the 1970s.

If you are coming to this book for lots of historical information about the European peasantry, you'll go away disappointed. This is more an extended meditation on the positive aspects, as the author sees them, of a way of life that essentially no longer exists.

"Remembering Peasants" by Patrick Joyce is a captivating exploration of rural life's transformation through the lens of memory and history. Joyce artfully intertwines personal anecdotes with meticulous research, offering a poignant reflection on the disappearance of traditional agrarian communities. The book provides a nuanced understanding of societal shifts, navigating the complexities of modernization and its impact on rural identity. Joyce's prose is both scholarly and accessible, making the historical analysis engaging. "Remembering Peasants" is a thought-provoking journey that invites readers to contemplate the resilience of rural memory amidst the ever-changing landscape of progress. It stands as a compelling testament to the importance of preserving collective narratives.