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"Remarkable…Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us." —Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker Bringing 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).
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The book is a well written series of facts with short anecdotes and quotes from a particular village meant as illustration for the whole. There was nothing here that was particularly new or insightful. If the focus had been narrowed to a shorter time period of 50-100 years or a particular region there would have been opportunity to understand the culture of night and share stories to illustrate the experience of those people in that time. I read the first 130 pages and skimmed the rest. My plan is to go to some of the source material in the bibliography for the insight.