Le monde retrouvé de Louis-François Pinagot opens with a challenge that Alain Corbin, one of France's preeminent historians of the nineteenth century, made to himself. This challenge was born of the critique directed at the collective volume to which he had contributed, Histoire de la vie privée, that it was concerned solely with the private life of social elites (Corbin, Historien du sensible [Paris, 2000] 157–158). In May 1995, Corbin—professor at the Sorbonne and author of innovative, highly praised studies of the effect of migration on the area which supplies labor, and of prostitution, odor, the idea and experience of the shore, leisure, belfries, and more—walked into the archives of the Orne, the department where he grew up. He took the list of villages in the department, closed his eyes and let his fingers pick one. Then he went to the records of this tiny commune, closed his eyes again, and picked Louis-François Pinagot (1798–1876), maker of wooden shoes (sabots). For the next two and one-half years, Corbin set out in quest of Pinagot.