. .We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert, but what was it like for a commoner? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Catch the omnibus to work and wash laundry while wearing a corset? How To Be A Victorian is a new approach to history, a journey back in time more intimate, personal, and physical than anything before. It is one told from the inside out--how our forebears interacted with the practicalities of their world--and it's a history of those things that make up the day-to-day reality of life, matters so small and seemingly mundane that people scarcely mention them in their diaries or letters. Moving through the rhythm of the day, from waking up to the sound of a knocker-upper man poking a stick at your window, to retiring for nocturnal activities, when the door finally closes on twenty-four hours of life, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work, and play.If you liked The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century or 1000 Years of Annoying the French, you will love this book.

    Now this fascinating book extends the Mindset List approach to dramatize what it was like to grow up for every American generation since 1880, showcasing the remarkable changes in what Americans have considered "normal" about the world around them.Expands Tom McBride and Ron Nief's popular annual Mindset Lists to explore the mindset of nine generations of Americans, from 1880 to the future high school graduates of 2030Offers a novel and absorbing way to understand the frame of reference of Americans through history, whether it's the high school grads of 1918, who viewed riding an elevator as a thrill second only to roller coasters, or those of 2009, who have always thought of "friend" as an active verbPuts a human face on the evolution of historical changes related to technology, the struggle for rights and equality, the calamities of war and depression, and other areasThe annual Mindset List garners extensive media attention, including on Today, The Early Show, the NBC Nightly News, CNN, and Fox as well as in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, and hundreds of international publicationsWhatever your own generational mindset, this book will give you an entertaining and important new tool for understanding the unique perspective and experience of Americans over more than a hundred and fifty years.

    A quick read packed with information from cover to cover. Here you will find out: Which US president survived an assassination attempt - and didn’t even pause his speech? What holiday’s origin story was actually just a tall tale to unite a country at war? Where in the world can you find an American mountain range - that isn’t in America? How did an earthquake lead to the Trail of Tears? What First Lady gossip shook up an entire presidential cabinet? Overstuffed like the Thanksgiving turkey with answers to these questions and more facts - sometimes fun, sometimes serious, but always as true as we can confirm amongst America’s fables - The Great Book of American Trivia takes on the real drama behind the quaint stories we found as students in US history books. A novelty amongst trivia books, here you’ll learn the real stories, the mysteries, and the fascinating tidbits about American history from its first inhabitants to present day.Whether you know nothing about America’s past or you consider yourself an expert, you’ll learn something new and find yourself entertained as you discover or relive the nation’s troubles, mistakes, triumphs, and challenges. Dig in now and start learning the interesting stories that shaped America into what it is today.

    In reality, mythology is more screwed up than a schizophrenic shaman doing hits of unidentified. Wait, it all makes sense now. In Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes, Cory O’Brien, creator of Myths RETOLD!, sets the stories straight. These are rude, crude, totally sacred texts told the way they were meant to be told: loudly, and with lots of four-letter words. Skeptical? Here are just a few gems to consider: � Zeus once stuffed an unborn fetus inside his thigh to save its life after he exploded its mother by being too good in bed. � The entire Egyptian universe was saved because Sekhmet just got too hammered to keep murdering everyone. � The Hindu universe is run by a married couple who only stop murdering in order to throw sweet dance parties…on the corpses of their enemies. � The Norse goddess Freyja once consented to a four-dwarf gangbang in exchange for one shiny necklace. And there’s more dysfunctional goodness where that came from.

    Beeton's Book of Household Management is a volume of insight and common sense. Written by what one might now describe as a Victorian Martha Stewart, the book offers advice on fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons, and the management of servants. To the modern reader expecting stuffy verbosity or heavy moralizing, Beeton's book is a revelation: it explores the foods of Europe and beyond, suggesting new food stuffs and techniques, mixing domestic advice with discussions of science, religion, class, industrialism and gender roles. Alternately frugal and fashionable, anxious and self confident, the book highlights the concerns of the growing Victorian middle-class at a key moment in its history. This abridged edition serves as a cookery book, while documenting a significant aspect of Victorian social and cultural history.

    Powell first arrived at the servants' entrance of one of those great houses in the 1920s. As a kitchen maid - the lowest of the low - she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30am and went on until after dark. It was a far cry from her childhood on the beaches of Hove, where money and food were scarce, but warmth and laughter never were. Yet from the gentleman with a penchant for stroking the housemaids' curlers, to raucous tea-dances with errand boys, to the heartbreaking story of Agnes the pregnant under-parlormaid, fired for being seduced by her mistress's nephew, Margaret's tales of her time in service are told with wit, warmth, and a sharp eye for the prejudices of her situation. Margaret Powell's true story of a life spent in service is a fascinating "downstairs" portrait of the glittering, long-gone worlds behind the closed doors of Downton Abbey and 165 Eaton Place.

    

    It's an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.

    In Wicked Plants, Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature’s most appalling creations. It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. You’ll learn which plants to avoid (like exploding shrubs), which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome (like the vine that ate the South), and which ones have been killing for centuries (like the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother). Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

    The internationally acclaimed “American with the Venetian heart,” Donna Leon, tells its fascinating story (The Washington Post).First used in medieval Venice as a deftly maneuverable getaway boat, the gondola evolved over the centuries into a floating pleasure palace, bedecked in silk, that facilitated the romantic escapades of the Venetian elite. Today, the gondola wears black—a gleaming, elegant hue, and is manned by robust gondolieri in black-and-white-striped shirts and straw hats.A tourist favorite, the gondola has never ceased to be a part of authentic Venice. Each boat’s 280 pieces are carefully fashioned in a maestro’s workshop—though Leon also recounts a tale of an American friend who attempted to make a gondola all on his own. The feat took five years and countless do-overs. But the gondola is a work of art well worth the labor. And once its arched prow pushes off from the dock, the single Venetian at its oar just might break out in a barcarole, a popular Italian boat song. The best of these songs, as timeless as the allure of the gondola itself, are compiled into an accompanying CD.

    One of the chapters in each trivia book was “Disturbing Facts about Our World”. I decided to fill an entire volume with facts about upsetting crimes and mayhem, combined with unbelievable yet real instances of misfortune and misery. This is a book where grim examples of bigotry and hypocrisy are intertwined with amusing stories of bad luck. In the spirit of the times we live in, I dedicated a whole chapter to COVID-19 trivia and weird medical conditions. I am well aware that many potential readers might be overwhelmed by the condensed negativity, but hey… a fact is a fact! Continue to read if you are curious to learn:- Why were the trousers of New Zealand’s farmers exploding?- What is the depressing origin of the phrase “Hip Hip, Hooray”?- Why did the Spanish Habsburgs royal family sleep with human mummies?- Why was it legal in Iceland until 2015 to kill Basque people?- Who was the “Deep Throat” informer from the Watergate scandal?- How many people were killed trying to cross the notorious Berlin Wall?- Why do snakes make a better pet than cats or dogs?- How can millipedes cause a train crash?- What is the etymology of “thug”?- What are the chances of getting killed by rubbish falling from space?- How did polygamist men in Kuwait manage to visit all their wives during the coronavirus lockdown?However incredible these pieces of trivia might sound, all entries have been verified and fact-checked.

    Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger have uncovered numerous stories about hoaxes, inventions, secrets, and rare incidents -- many involving the most famous and powerful people in America.President U. S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage.J. Edgar Hoover refused to allow people to walk on his shadow.France shipped Louisiana twenty-five prostitutes because women were in short supply in 1721.H. L. Hunt won his first oil well in a game of five-card stud.Even historians find that One-Night Stands with American History features fascinating stories they never knew. Now updated with facts and anecdotes from the last twenty years, this volume is a treasure trove of remarkable stories that will startle, entertain, and inform you. And the best part is that they're all true!

    The author of 'The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid' isn't, after all, a Shakespeare scholar, a playwright, or even a biographer. Reading 'Shakespeare The World As Stage', however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard himself would have selected for the task. The man who gave us 'The Mother Tongue' and 'A Walk in the Woods' approaches Shakespeare with the same freedom of spirit and curiosity that made those books such reader favorites. A refreshing take on an elusive literary master.

       With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your high school teachers were afraid to ask: What’s the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? How many women?and men?did Lord Byron actually sleep with? And why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels? Classic literature was never this much fun in school!