What We Did in Bed: A Horizontal History

Brian Fagan · Nadia Durrani

sept 2019 · Yale University Press

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A social history that pulls back the covers on the most intimate piece of furniture in our lives: “Entertaining . . . will keep you awake long into the night.” —Paul Chrystal, author of The History of Sweets
 
Louis XIV ruled France from his bedchamber. Winston Churchill governed Britain from his during World War II. Travelers routinely used to bed down with complete strangers, and whole families shared beds in many preindustrial households. Beds were expensive items—and often for show. Tutankhamun was buried on a golden bed, wealthy Greeks were sent to the afterlife on dining beds, and deceased middle-class Victorians were propped up on a bed in the parlor.
 
In this sweeping social history that spans seventy thousand years, Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani look at the endlessly varied role of the bed through time. This was a place for sex, death, childbirth, storytelling, and sociability as well as sleeping. But who did what with whom, why, and how could vary incredibly depending on the time and place. It is only in the modern era that the bed has transformed into a private, hidden zone—and its rich social history has largely been forgotten.
 
Includes photographs

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Brian Fagan is one of the world’s leading archaeological writers and an internationally recognized authority on world prehistory. He is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His other books include Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization and A Little History of Archaeology. Nadia Durrani has spent the past two decades writing about world archaeology. She is the co-author of several of Brian Fagan’s market-leading textbooks and the former editor of Current World Archaeology magazine.