At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime

· Hachette UK
3.0
1 review
Ebook
480
Pages
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About this ebook

A fascinating and colourful social history of the nighttime.

'A wonderful revelation of a vanished age of darkness' SPECTATOR

'Fascinating' SUNDAY TIMES

'A splendid book ... great entertainment' Sir Patrick Moore

'A triumph of social history. Almost every page contains something to surprise the reader ... one of the most enjoyable literary experiences of the year' MAIL ON SUNDAY

From blanket fairs to night kings, curfews to crime, At Day's Close is an intriguing and captivating investigation into the night. Until now, this rich and complex universe in which we spend nearly half of our lives was a world long-lost to historians.

Here, Ekirch explores how the night was lived in the past, through travel accounts, memoirs, letters, folklore, poems, court records and coroner's reports. More than this, it is a passionate argument in the case for less artificial light in an increasingly bright world.

Ratings and reviews

3.0
1 review
A Google user
March 2, 2017
A fascinating topic of discussion, but the construction isn't great. A surprising lack of grammar, punctuation and sentence structure (did anyone edit it at all?) for a university lecturer? A decent read, but you'll have to grimace your way through the writing style.
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About the author

Professor A. Roger Ekirch was born in 1950 in America. He teaches at Virginia Tech. On the basis of his research into the nighttime, Ekirch was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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