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At Day's Close: Night in Times Past (edition 2006)
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0393329011, Paperback)
"Remarkable….Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us."—Arthur Krystal, The New YorkerBringing light to the shadows of history through a "rich weave of citation and archival evidence" (Publishers Weekly), scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historians—those that unfold at night. In this "triumph of social history" (Mail on Sunday), Ekirch's "enthralling anthropology" (Harper's) exposes the nightlife that spawned a distinct culture and a refuge from daily life.
Fear of crime, of fire, and of the supernatural; the importance of moonlight; the increased incidence of sickness and death at night; evening gatherings to spin wool and stories; masqued balls; inns, taverns, and brothels; the strategies of thieves, assassins, and conspirators; the protective uses of incantations, meditations, and prayers; the nature of our predecessors' sleep and dreams—Ekirch reveals all these and more in his "monumental study" (The Nation) of sociocultural history, "maintaining throughout an infectious sense of wonder" (Booklist).
(retrieved from Amazon Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:41:39 -0400)
Crime, fire, and witches; navigating fields by starlight; work parties to spin wool and tales; masked balls and night-cellars; midnight liaisons and bundling; the rhythms of sleep and dreams - all these and more are interwoven in this study. Panoramic in scope, At Day's Close is fashioned on an intimate scale, enriched by personal stories and twenty years of research.
(summary from another edition)
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