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A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime (2005)

by Ella Hollowood The premise of A. Roger Ekirch’s At Day’s Close is a relatively simple one: what was nighttime like in Western society before industrialisation and modern lighting? Yet the result is a rich and fascinating study of ‘the forgotten half of the human experience’ and of a fundamental shift that took place between…
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“Steel their Bodies and Minds” – How the Wandervogel reconciled nature with modernity

By Charlotte Alt Life in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century was an overwhelming experience. Modernity by then had arrived in full force: cities exploded with masses of people, and modern innovations like the telegraph and railway drastically changed the pace of everyday life. As urban spaces appeared increasingly overstimulating, people began to…
