100 Books Like Montaillou

No book list on any aspect of southern France would be complete without one of Peter Mayle’s many books on his travels and adventures in Provence. 

His initial best seller is a grand introduction to the many small villages, customs, foods, and peoples who maintain the traditional aspects of the unique lifestyle to be found there, which in some places reflects hundreds of years with little change.

I have found in my travels that because this area of France was spared the ravages of the two World Wars, any trip to the region puts the visitor in touch with this remarkable past in a way few other European locales can. I often found myself wrapped up in the incredible history that surrounded me everywhere I went in the region, leading to my own attempt at expressing some of it.

I’ve learned that Peter Mayle, through his books, is like having… show more.

If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions I’ve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.

I had been immersed in oral cultures for more than two decades when I read this book by Lynne Kelly and it was like a curtain being lifted for me. Suddenly I found affirmation that oral traditions indeed had meaning and purpose but – more than this – that they were supplemented in this by art, by dance and performance, by poetry and music. Lynne’s clever and readable book has had a lasting impact on me and the research questions I endeavor to answer. Everyone interested in human pasts should read it.

When I first read this book, not only was I struck by its central theme that ‘myths’ have meaning but also by the fact that it is our problem that we cannot today recognize myths for what they once were. All oral traditions evolve through time, sometimes over thousands of years and across hundreds of generations of retelling, but if their core is sufficiently memorable, then it can remain recognizable. It is up to us to unpack the stories we hear today, to learn how they changed through time, and try to see whether there is an empirical core in their hearts. This book is a must for anyone interested in learning more about the meaning of ‘myth’ rather than romanticizing it.

The second edition of this book is the one I read, more than thirty years ago, and it taught me a respect for oral traditions that I had not then fully rationalized. Literate people often disparage those who can neither read nor write, suggesting they could not possibly have any useful knowledge to contribute to a literate world. This is what I have termed ‘the arrogance of literacy’ and is something Vansina, following decades of familiarity with African oral traditions, shows to be baseless. Orally communicated knowledge was key to survival and to understanding one’s place in the world. This is a pioneering study that should never be forgotten.

First published in 1940, Hawaiian Mythology is an astonishingly comprehensive compilation of native Hawaiian stories and beliefs that, had it not been for the systematic – even dogged – efforts of people like Martha Beckwith may have never survived to today. This is a book to dip into, especially if you find yourself in Polynesia. The stories are factual, often unembellished, which allows you a glimpse into the soul of Pacific peoples. This book also explores the connections between (remote) Hawaii and other island groups in the western Pacific whence its people came, bearing oral memories that seeded the geography of Hawaii and directed the nature of its human occupation, probably hundreds of years before Europeans even knew the Pacific Ocean existed.

Looking back across six decades, MFK Fisher, one of the most astute and evocative travel and gastronomical authors ever to put pen to paper, recalls the year when everything for her was new: France, Europe, marriage, food, culture. Based in provincial Dijon, Mary studied French, shopped in the open markets, learned to cook, and jotted down astute observations concerning everyone she met, while her husband wrote his dissertation. My first encounter with Tours, in 1979, reminds me of Fisher’s encounter with Dijon in 1929. Like her, I was warmed by the joy of discovery, the sense that every stone and leaf, every living thing that I encountered had layers upon layers of meaning, and it was my job to uncover some of them, revealing meanings that no one had seen before. 

Everyone knows that there are no “French people.” Each region has its particular culture, and Paris is a country unto itself. Focusing on one particular artisan, his clients, and his neighborhood, Carhart helps us to understand what it means to inhabit a single quartier of Paris. It’s one of the most beautiful memoirs I’ve ever read – and I don’t even play the piano!

We can’t understand the present unless we understand the past, but the reverse is also true: I would not be a good historian of medieval poverty – including all the layers of infrastructure, production, famine, religious ideology, and public policy that define, ameliorate and exacerbate poverty – if I did not also pay attention to how these forces work in the present, and to the actual lives of the people who are so affected. This book paints some of the best portraits I’ve seen of people who were trying to make ends meet during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We now need a book on how and why the poverty landscape continues to change in the wake of the covid epidemic. 

I love a dramatic setting. This is the first in Kate Mosse's Languedoc trilogy (the second is also dual-timeline). From the very beginning, I felt as if she had picked me up and dropped me in the heart of the fortified city of Carcassonne, which has a history as dramatic as its setting.

I’m also quite interested in archaeology, so moving between a modern narrative that takes place on an archaeological dig and an 800-year-old crusade in what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site was a perfect combination.