A book which makes the reader think, teasing and encouraging with
spicy details, long views, a capacity for the unexpected insight.
Now for something completely different.--Jasper Griffin "London
Review of Books "
Private life has always been a matter of public conjecture. This
admirable book brings it intelligently into the web of social
history and is a model for historians and readers alike.
Beautifully produced, it adds apt and rare illustrations to a text
by experts who presuppose human curiosity, but no undue knowledge.
Its range and level of argument will intrigue anyone who has
wondered about past attitudes to such matters as sex and the
family, households, social inferiors, dress and even
undress.--Robin Lane Fox "Washington Post "
The five essays collected here...treat readers to a vast array of
anecdotes and conjectures about the private life of our
forebears.--Roger Kimball "Wall Street Journal "
The new emphasis on the history of everybody has now been
consecrated in [this] ambitious five-volume series...Copious
illustrative materials--paintings, drawings, caricatures, and
photographs, all cannily chosen and wittily captioned to display
domestic life...Magnificent.--Roger Shattuck "New York Times Book
Review "
This first volume is one of the most arresting, original, and
rewarding historical surveys to be published in many years, and its
value is enhanced by the hundreds of illustrations, which present
almost every conceivable detail of private life as it was lived in
the centuries.--Bernard Knox "The Atlantic "
This is a long, demanding and very rewarding book. If the remaining
four volumes are of this quality, the series will indeed, as the
editors claim, be "a milestone in historical research."--Jane F.
Gardner "Times Higher Education Supplement "
This absorbingly illustrated series is intent on presenting the
past with both physical immediacy and with as little academic fuss
as possible. The illustrations in the first volume have a
subjective penetration of the text that is like an inner musical
accompaniment. This volume does not pretend to roll out a complete
rug of civilization...Few readers, even of "I, Claudius," will have
experienced pagan Rome with quite the freshness evident
here...History-to-touch.
A stimulating--indeed a provocative--and beautiful book on a
difficult subject...It's a treasure.
Together these five compact volumes cover much of the history of
the classical world, and do so with both ease and authority.
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