The Beggar and the Professor: A Sixteenth-Century Family Saga Book

A rare find thanks to Thomas and Felix Platter's obsessive journaling in 1500s-1600s. Ladurie essentially frames this family biography as a rags to riches story though it's more like rags to riches to rags to riches with lots of debt involved. Thomas Platter is a Swiss patriarch with extreme hiking skills (walked from one end of Switzerland to the other numerous time, across the Alps etc.) who was born in pastoral village and became a political and economic player. The story features his brilliant but neurotic surgeon son, Felix whose quirky personality and frequent dust-ups with other kids give texture to the memoir. Who knew 16th century Swiss society was so class-mobile; with Calvin on the scene and many changes underway the opportunities were open. A thoroughly modern tale except for the plague and all the mules.