Love Memoirs of a Breton Peasant? Readers share 100 books like Memoirs of a Breton Peasant...

By Jean-Marie Déguignet ,

Here are 100 books that Memoirs of a Breton Peasant fans have personally recommended if you like Memoirs of a Breton Peasant. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Fields of Glory: A Novel Fields of Glory

Mark Greenside Author Of (Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

From my list on the magic of Brittany France.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, anti-draft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.

Mark's book list on the magic of Brittany France

Mark Greenside Why Mark loves this book

This is the first book of a fictionalized family history, starting with the omniscient narrator’s maternal grandparents and paternal aunt, who are all born in the late 1880s: the World War I generation. The story takes place near Nantes, which until 1956 was part of Brittany, but then was administratively moved to a new department, the Loire Atlantic—though most people in Nantes and Brittany continue to believe the Nantois are Breton. As with many things French, the issue is far from settled.

Rouaud creates character through vignettes—and they’re wonderful: grandpa smoking; grandpa driving; grandma complaining about grandpa smoking and driving; their car—the infamous, uncomfortable, 2CV, deux chevaux—in the rain, the wind, on hills, having to wipe the windshield by hand to see, clearing grandma’s side, not grandpa’s, whose vision is blocked by pouring rain, streaking mud, and cigarette smoke. The rain leaks through the windows, the vents, and canvas roof.…

By Jean Rouaud ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fields of Glory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Through a family chronicle - some three generations of a middle-class family living on the French Atlantic coast - Rouaud evokes the lingering heartache of a whole nation: the period is the interval between the two wars, but the slaughter of World War I dominates. Winner of the Prix Goncourt.


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Book cover of The Beatles and the 1960s: Reception, Revolution, and Social Change

The Beatles and the 1960s by Kenneth L. Campbell,

The Beatles are widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history and their career has been the subject of many biographies. Yet the band's historical significance has not received sustained academic treatment to date. In The Beatles and the 1960s, Kenneth L. Campbell uses The…

Book cover of A Gift from Brittany: A Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside

Mark Greenside Author Of (Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

From my list on the magic of Brittany France.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, anti-draft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.

Mark's book list on the magic of Brittany France

Mark Greenside Why Mark loves this book

A twenty year old American woman goes to Paris to paint, meets a French artist, marries, has a child, and together buy a farmhouse and make a summer home and art studios in rural Brittany: that story. A memoir. 

The book was published in 2008, but the story takes place in the early 1960s when rural Brittany was closer to the 19th century than the 21st. I was in Paris in 1967, and it was still possible to rent a hotel room for under five dollars a night, to travel in Europe for ten dollars a day. In 1967, you could not safely drink the water in France, including in Paris, and you had to have proof of a typhus vaccine to return to the U.S. It was still more Henry Miller’s Paris than Macron’s.

This was the time of the last of every day berets, blue…

By Marjorie Price ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Gift from Brittany as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The enchanting memoir of an artist?s liberating sojourn in France during the sixties?and the friendship that transformed her life

While in her late twenties, Marjorie Price leaves the comfort of her Chicago suburb to strike out on her own in Paris and hone her artistic talents. Dazzled by everything French, she falls in love with a volatile French painter and they purchase an old farmhouse in the Breton countryside. When Marjorie?s seemingly idyllic marriage begins to unravel, she forms a friendship with an elderly peasant woman, Jeanne, who is illiterate, has three cows to her name, and has never left…


Book cover of The Price of Water in Finistère

Mark Greenside Author Of (Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

From my list on the magic of Brittany France.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, anti-draft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.

Mark's book list on the magic of Brittany France

Mark Greenside Why Mark loves this book

In 2000, angry at the state of the world, a fifty five year old acclaimed Swedish writer, sells her home and most of her belongings, leaves her homeland, and drives west with no destination in mind. She’s alone, but not lonely, searching for peace and freedom and a break with the past. She stops where the land ends, at the end of the world, Finistère, Brittany, where she buys a house, meets Madame C, and plants a garden. 

“It’s so wonderful here that one should write a book about it,” she tells Madame C, and spends the rest of the book refusing to write it, because to do so, she says, will diminish, simplify, and transform everything she loves about her new home. She’s like the banker who thinks money is filth and saves it; she’s the writer who distrusts words and writes—a memoir.

She writes about planting, tending, thinking,…

By Bodil Malmsten ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Price of Water in Finistère as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'In the same way as there's a partner for every person, there's a place. All you have to do is find the one that's yours among the billions that belong to someone else, you have to be awake, you have to choose.'

With this conviction in mind, acclaimed Swedish writer Bodil Malmsten abandons her native country at the age of fifty-five and settles in Brittany.

At the heart of this memoir is the conviction that the happiness to be found in Finistere will not allow itself to be, cannot be, expressed in writing. Embroidered around this seeming paradox are poignant,…


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Book cover of Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past

Api's Berlin Diaries by Gabrielle Robinson,

Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in…

Book cover of The Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village

Mark Greenside Author Of (Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living

From my list on the magic of Brittany France.

Why am I passionate about this?

Mark Greenside has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protestor, anti-draft counselor, Vista Volunteer, union leader, and college professor. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin and his stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. He presently lives in Alameda, California, where he continues to teach and be politically active, and Brittany, France, where he still can’t do anything without asking for help.

Mark's book list on the magic of Brittany France

Mark Greenside Why Mark loves this book

Pierre-Jakez picks up where Jean-Marie Déguignet left off. This book is essentially a continuation of the story, a 20th century account of peasant family life in an area not far from where Déguignet lived a century earlier—except this book celebrates and revels and respects Breton culture, life, people, music, food, history, etc. It was published in 1975 and is part of the world-wide movement of identity politics, when ethnic groups, genders, religions, and nationalities are discovering their roots, history, beauty, and genius.

This book is a paean to Breton life and culture, and Pierre-Jakez becomes a cultural icon and hero for writing it. By the end of his life (1914-95), he is honored throughout Brittany. I saw and heard (but couldn’t understand) him at the huge, (thousands of people) annual Festival de Cornouaille in Quimper, where he was the guest of honor. 

This book is a mirror image of…

By Pierre-Jakez Helias ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Horse of Pride as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A marvelous chronicle of Breton lives and life, seen largely through the eyes of a child grown old, remembering how it used to be, in the years between the two world wars. The memoirs are magnificent. . . . The affectionate and touching portraits are not just of one family. . . . but of a whole people. . . . Like that faintly sweet, strong apple liqueur, this book should be savored slowly-set aside and picked up again, chapters read and re-read."-Neil Pickett, The New Republic
"A rich and moving memoir. . . . We can see why this…


Book cover of Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

Joe Wilkins Author Of The Entire Sky

From my list on books about rural America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on the high plains of eastern Montana. Like most rural folks, we lived close to the bone, even in the best of times. Then, when I was nine, my father died—and things got even harder. We finally had to put our acres up for lease, and I made a goal to leave that hard place. Though I worked hard for this new life I find myself leading—I studied, won scholarships, earned an MFA, and became a professor—ever since I left Montana, I’ve been trying to understand the distance between there and where I find myself now. I’ve been trying to understand rural America.

Joe's book list on books about rural America

Joe Wilkins Why Joe loves this book

This book takes on class, gender, and addiction, plus a host of other contemporary issues facing rural America and the nation—and Smarsh still manages to craft a compelling, human memoir.

This book might be the antidote to all the easy, anodyne, partisan conclusions the talking heads offer about rural America. As someone who grew up in rural America but now lives in a small city on the West Coast, I felt challenged reading this memoir.

Smarsh is the best kind of rabble-rouser; she’s telling it straight no matter who is listening. 

By Sarah Smarsh ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

*Finalist for the National Book Award*
*Finalist for the Kirkus Prize*
*Instant New York Times Bestseller*
*Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly*

An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.*

Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through…


Book cover of Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro

Carl Abbott Author Of Suburbs: A Very Short Introduction

From my list on suburbs around the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a suburban kid in Knoxville, Tennessee and Dayton, Ohio and didn’t see much wrong with my neighborhood. As someone who then grew up to write and teach about the history of cities and city planning, I’ve long been struck by the mismatch between high-brow scorn for “suburbia” and the everyday experience of people who live in suburban communities. This short book is an effort to show how the world became suburban and what that meant to people in the different corners of the world—and maybe to put in a plug for my suburban Meadow Hills and College Hill neighborhoods. 

Carl's book list on suburbs around the world

Carl Abbott Why Carl loves this book

The improvised communities that ring the cities of Latin America have a bad reputation as squatter towns. Not so fast.

Look beyond the surface and you will see communities with strong social ties, systems of self-government, and residents who are as committed to their neighborhood as any American suburbanite. Janice Perlman has spent decades studying the Rio de Janeiro that lies behind its beaches, and gives a clear-eyed look at some of the self-built communities on the city’s edge.

By Janice Perlman ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Favela as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Janice Perlman wrote the first in-depth account of life in the favelas, a book hailed as one of the most important works in global urban studies in the last 30 years. Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she had first met in 1969-as well as their children and grandchildren-Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better
life. Perlman discovers that while educational levels have risen, democracy has replaced dictatorship, and material conditions have improved, many residents feel more marginalized than ever.…


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Book cover of Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France

Doctors at War by Ellen Hampton,

Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle against the Nazi Occupation of France takes readers into the moral labyrinth of the Occupation years, 1940-45, to examine how the medical community dealt with the evil authority imposed on them. Anti-Jewish laws prevented many doctors from practicing, inspiring many to form secret medical…

Book cover of The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

Guido Alfani Author Of As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West

From my list on the rich, the super-rich, and wealth inequality in general.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a student, I have been fascinated with social and economic inequality–the more so because back then, my professors seemed to disregard this subject of study. So, I made it one of my own main areas of research: I simply needed to understand more about the nature and the causes of inequality in human societies. In recent years, I have been busy researching economic inequality in different historical settings, also looking at specific socioeconomic strata. I began with the poor, and more recently, I focused on the rich. In my list of recommendations, I included books that, I believe, are particularly insightful concerning wealth and the wealthy.

Guido's book list on the rich, the super-rich, and wealth inequality in general

Guido Alfani Why Guido loves this book

I have always loved Branko Milanović’s way of addressing complex topics in a very accessible and usually highly original way.

In this book, Milanović pays much attention to the rich and the super-rich and devises a way of comparing their wealth across the ages by asking this simple question: how much labour could they command in their own historical period and socio-economic context?

So, for example, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest Roman of Caesar’s times, could, with the yearly income from his vast possessions, command the work of 32,000 people. But, as Milanović argues, today’s super-rich are richer than past ones–circa 2010, the richest person in the world was the telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, who could command the work of 440,000 Mexicans.

By Branko Milanovic ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Haves and the Have-Nots as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Who is the richest person in the world, ever? Does where you were born affect how much money you'll earn over a lifetime? How would we know? Why- beyond the idle curiosity- do these questions even matter? In The Haves and the Have-Nots , Branko Milanovic, one of the world's leading experts on wealth, poverty, and the gap that separates them, explains these and other mysteries of how wealth is unevenly spread throughout our world, now and through time. Milanovic uses history, literature and stories straight out of today's newspapers, to discuss one of the major divisions in our social…


Book cover of Inequality: What Can Be Done?

Francis J. Teal Author Of The Poor and the Plutocrats

From my list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have worked on the problems of poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, for much of my professional life. I worked at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, which is part of the Department of Economics at Oxford University, from 1991 until my retirement in 2012. I continue to work both with the Centre and the Department as a Managing Editor of Oxford Economic Papers and Chief Editor of the Journal of African Economies. My recent book The Poor and the Plutocrats grew out of this background where I wanted to understand the links between very poor countries and those of much richer ones.

Francis' book list on inequality and the disagreements over the cause

Francis J. Teal Why Francis loves this book

Atkinson died in January 2017. His life’s academic work focused on the causes of inequality and poverty. He had a particular interest in policy in these areas which is reflected in this book which offers a rationale for and a detailed account of how household income can be made more equal.

He is concerned with inequality in developed countries, so his focus is on the US, UK, and European countries. He first sets out how it is that income inequality has so greatly increased covering some of the same ground as Milanovic. He then, in chapters on progressive taxation and social security, sets out detailed proposals which he argues would considerably reduce inequality and promote social justice.

His proposals on progressive taxation would, it can be safely asserted, reduce Tory MPs to apoplexy.

By Anthony B. Atkinson ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Inequality as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Richard A. Lester Award for the Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics, Princeton University
An Economist Best Economics and Business Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year

Inequality is one of our most urgent social problems. Curbed in the decades after World War II, it has recently returned with a vengeance. We all know the scale of the problem-talk about the 99% and the 1% is entrenched in public debate-but there has been little discussion of what we can do but despair. According to the distinguished economist Anthony Atkinson,…


Book cover of The People of the Abyss

Mick Finlay Author Of Arrowood and the Thames Corpses

From my list on the lives of the poor in 19th century London.

Why am I passionate about this?

I didn’t know anything about Victorian history before I started writing the Arrowood books. The idea for the character of William Arrowood came as I was reading a Sherlock Holmes story. It occurred to me that if I was a private detective working in London at the same time, I’d probably be jealous, resentful, and perhaps a little bitter about his success and fame. That was the basis of Arrowood. I started to write a few pages and then realized I needed to learn a lot about the history. Since then, I’ve read hundreds of books on the topic, pored over newspapers in the British Library, and visited countless museums.

Mick's book list on the lives of the poor in 19th century London

Mick Finlay Why Mick loves this book

Published in 1903, this classic piece of investigative journalism describes novelist/journalist Jack London’s visit to London in 1902, during which he tried to understand how the poor live by living himself as a pauper. Full of vivid descriptions of the people he met as he stayed in doss-houses, walked across the city to find work, and scraped for food, this experience made a profound impression on him. He later said "No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor." The characters you meet in this book, and their stories, just burst off the page.

By Jack London ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The People of the Abyss as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a work of nonfiction by American writer Jack London. Written after the author spent three months living in London's poverty-stricken East End, The People of the Abyss bears witness to the difficulties faced by hundreds and thousands of people every day in one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Inspired by Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, London hoped to expose the indignities faced by those left behind by industrialization. In 1902, Jack London traveled to England to live in…


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Book cover of Born to be Brave: My 56 Hour Battle for my Life in the Olympic National Forest

Born to be Brave by Stephanie Lincoln,

On August 8, 2020, 40-year-old Stephanie Lincoln seemingly had the perfect life. She just had the wedding of her dreams, owned a successful business, and was traveling the country in an RV with her husband and 3 dogs. An innocent choice to go on a short hike in the Olympic…

Book cover of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret

Robin Kirk Author Of Righting Wrongs: 20 Human Rights Heroes Around the World

From my list on women human rights visionaries.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a rights advocate since I was a middle schooler planning how to help save the whales. In college, I volunteered in anti-apartheid campaigns, then became a journalist covering the rise of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru. I wanted my research and words to make change. I spent 12 years covering Peru and Colombia for Human Rights Watch. Now, I try to inspire other young people to learn about and advocate for human rights as a professor and the co-director of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute. I also write fiction for kids that explores human rights themes and just completed The Bond Trilogy, an epic fantasy.

Robin's book list on women human rights visionaries

Robin Kirk Why Robin loves this book

One of the most important new issues faced by rights advocates is climate change. Macarthur genius award-winner Catherine Coleman Flowers is on the front line of that fight, based on her own childhood as the daughter of an activist Black family in Lowndes County, Alabama. This memoir captures Flowers’ essence: someone who just can’t let an injustice slide by. And she will talk to anyone who might be able to help, including with cleaning up the raw sewage that continues to poison the homes of many poor Alabamians. Flowers clearly describes the link between local rights issues and the global campaign to deal with climate change.

By Catherine Coleman Flowers ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Waste as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The MacArthur grant-winning environmental justice activist's riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America's most vulnerable

A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur "genius," grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers's life's work-a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor,…


Book cover of Fields of Glory: A Novel Fields of Glory
Book cover of A Gift from Brittany: A Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside
Book cover of The Price of Water in Finistère

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