Everyday Life Through the Ages

Michael Worth Davison (editor)

Published by Reader's Digest, London, 1992

About this Item

Beautifully printed and illustrated book of life throughout the ages. This is a large and very heavy book; the price includes additional postal charges to be incurred in shipping this book. There is much about the history of everyday life that we shall never know. People kept their secrets. Some things, however, we know better than they did. They had at best only a limited knowledge of their world - or worlds. We have a global overview. And we have the great advantage over all our ancestors of knowing what came next, including the disasters and the wars that broke the pattern of everyday life. This volume is designed to satisfy curiosity. It spans the centuries and covers the continents. There are two kinds of curiosity to which it respomds. First is our natural curiosity to learn more about people in the past who had something in common with ourselves. Second is our equally natural curiosity to learn more about people who were - and are - very different from ourselves. This book covers both the familiar and the exotic. It cannot, however, cover everyday life in all countries at all times. Like all history, it has to be selective. Some elements of everyday life remain constant through the centuries and across the world. For life to continue, new generations of men, women and children are born. They have all had to find shelter, to eat, to drink, to clothe themselves, to divide their time between different pursuits, to work and to play. Yet they have done all these basic things in different ways in different times and places - and seldom completely of their own choice, The relationship between necessity and choice in any generation has often been complex, though equally often people take choice or necessity for granted. How long and how hard we work or are made to work, and how far we travel - by choice or by necessity - have always varied greatly even witnin the same generation. On the cover of this book are pictures of many of the characters, and inside there are accounts of the daily lives of such contrasting people as a Roman centurian, a Saxon ploughman, a Sumerian schoolchild, a medieval nun, a North American trapper, a pilgrim on the road to Compostela, and a Victorian pauper. There is something in this volume to appeal to all interests - and to all ages.

Seller Inventory # 004652

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Everyday Life Through the Ages
• Publisher: Reader's Digest, London
• Publication Date: 1992
• Binding: Pictorial Boards
• Edition: First.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Book Type: Book