We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. But what was it like for a commoner like you or me? 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? This book helps you teach what you need to know about 19th century living.

Whether as an epic battleground or a cradle of civilizations, Europe has left an enduring imprint on the history of the world for over two millennia.

From megalithic civilizations through ancient times, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of nationalism, two world wars and the years that followed, this book looks beyond a series of distinct national histories to offer the history of Europe as an often shared experience across one continent.

This book delves into events such a...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer turns his eye to the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of this new place, he threw himself into the Dutch museums. Soon, he found himself unearthing the strange, inspiring and sometimes terrifying stories of the artists who shaped one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity, the Dutch Golden Age.

As he explored the hidden wor...