One of my very favourite books of the year so far, a wonderful all encompassing history of European and American home life as experienced over the past 500 years. Judith Flanders overturns our notions of what home has meant in previous centuries, our own notions of the family home would seem fantastical even to someone from 100 years ago.
How advancements have been made are lovingly detailed and the humblest household item is considered alongside more necessary items such as bricks for the walls and glass for the windows. I loved the wealth of detail, the quotations from diaries, letters and literature and how one is left wondering what the future will bring, will future homes be unrecognisable to us?
Like for Like Reading
If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, Lucy Worsley
House Proud: 19th Century Watercolour Interiors, Gail S Davidson, Floramae McCarron-Cates & Charlotte Gere
The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows in her fascinating new book, 'home' is a relatively new idea. When in 1900 Dorothy assured the citizens of Oz that 'There is no place like home', she was expressing a view that was the climax of 300 years of change.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows in her fascinating new book, 'home' is a relatively new idea.
The Making of Home features in the following genres: Biographies & Autobiographies, History, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, History and Archaeology, Recommendations
Hardback. Not Available.
The Making of Home was written by Judith Flanders and published by Atlantic Books
The Making of Home has 368 pages