'The Cheese and the Worms': Carlo Ginzburg Launches Microhistory

Learned about this book last year when I saw it in the bibliography[0] in the credits of the game Pentiment (2022) (amazing game if you are interested in history btw). I keep hoping to eventually stumble upon it in a second hand bookshop.

0: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pentiment/comments/1bh728h/pentimen...

I had no idea of the influence of 'The Cheese and the Worms', but I also didn't know how long it had already been around when I chanced upon it in 1989. Time to read it again.

It's been a while since I've read 'The Cheese and the Worms'.

I think that many of our conceptions of Europe, and history are off. There mas much more churn and people moving around than we think. Though Menocchio probably didn't travel far, the priests and members of the Inquisition did. If you where close to a river, you'd see lots of people moving around, they were highways of goods being moved.

This has been widely known already, it just takes pop history decades to catch up with what professional historians know and do.

And there is also the fact that a lot of people prefer myths to history, especially myths about sacred homelands unspoiled by people traveling and moving (i.e. migrants).