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The Invention of Comfort
Year
2003
Language
ENGLISH
Publication Information
Johns Hopkins University Press
Summary
A history and analysis of the development of domestic design in early modern Britain and America. How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture specialists as well as to general readers, this pathbreaking work brings together such disparate topics of analysis as climate, fire, food, clothing, the senses, and anxiety-especially about the night.