"If we wish to know the innermost thought and passion of the French peasant, it is very easy. Walk, any Sunday, into the country and follow him." So begins this extraordinary book by the man often called France's greatest historian. After its publication in 1846, Le peuple sold 1,000 copies in a single day in Paris alone, and was soon considered the classic study of French society in the early nineteenth century. John P. McKay's translation...