French historian Fernand Braudel was a leading figure of the Annales School. His books, including Out of Italy, The Mediterranean, A History of Civilizations, and Civilization and Capitalism, are considered to be classics of modern history. His emphasis on the role of large-scale socioeconomic factors in the making and writing of history led to his being named in 2011 the most important historian of the second half of the Twentieth century by History Today. He died in 1985.