America's First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First...

In "Tinsel," Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation's most over-the-top celebration: Christmas.

A funny and provocative cultural history of class, manners, and the decline of civility In his smart and thought provoking new book, literary/social critic Mark Caldwell gives us a history of the demise of manners and charts the progress of an epidemic of rudeness in America. The breakdown of civility has in recent years become a national obsession, and our modern climate of boorishness has cultivated a host of etiquette watchdogs, like Miss Manners...

Much has been written about the lives of the Tudors, but it is sometimes difficult to really grasp how they experienced the world. Using the five senses, Amy Licence presents a new perspective on the material culture of the past, exploring the Tudors' relationship with the fabric of their existence, from the clothes on their back, roofs over their heads and food on their tables, to the wider questions of how they interpreted and presented themselves,...

Being English used to be easy. As the dominant culture in a country that dominated an empire that dominated the world, they had little need to examine themselves and ask who they were. But something has happened over the past century. A new self-confidence seems to have taken hold in Wales and Scotland, while others try to forge a new relationship with Europe. What exactly sets the English apart from their British compatriots? Is there such a thing...

With wit and an unerring eye for detail, acclaimed author Ian Frazier takes readers on a journey through his family's story, his nation's history, and himself Using letters and other family documents, Frazier reconstructs two hundred years of middle-class life, visiting small towns his ancestors lived in, reading books they read, and discovering the larger forces of history that affected them. He observes some of them during the British raid on Danbury,...

Robert Fossier (1927–2012) was professor emeritus of medieval history at the Sorbonne. He was the author of many books on medieval history and the editor of The Cambridge History of the Middle Ages. A sweeping account of what medieval life was like for ordinary people In The Axe and the Oath, one of the world's leading medieval historians presents a compelling picture of daily life in the Middle Ages as it was experienced by ordinary people....

The author of the bestselling Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon takes aim at the boomer generation in a hilarious work of social commentary. It's become fashionable to vilify baby boomers. Professional iconoclast and baby boomer Joe Queenan, however, takes a somewhat more benign position: Yes, the baby boomers are venal, self-obsessed egomaniacs blighted by an insalubrious interest in things like the provenance of their neighbors' balsamic...

For the fortieth anniversary of 1969, Rob Kirkpatrick takes a look back at a year when America witnessed many of the biggest landmark achievements, cataclysmic episodes, and generation-defining events in recent history. 1969 was the year that saw Apollo 11 land on the moon, the Cinderella stories of Joe Namath?s Jets and the ?Miracle Mets,? the Harvard student strike and armed standoff at Cornell, the People?s Park riots, the first artificial heart...

Following the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and the end of the War of 1812, the Maumee Valley became open to settlement. John Pray arrived in 1817, built a dam to run a mill, and the site became known as Pray's Falls. By 1831, Pray had platted the first 50 lots and called it Waterville. Others were attracted to the area, and the trading post inn that Pray had constructed in 1828 was greatly enlarged in 1837. The Columbian House became an important...