A. Roger Ekirch Knihy

Ako ľudia trávili noc v minulosti? Kam sa podel druhý spánok a varenie piva pri svite mesiaca? Ponorte sa do očarujúcej ríše nočných aktivít a odhaľte neobyčajnú históriu nočného života!Americký historik a odborník na spánok A. R. Ekirch píše o všetkom, čo súvisí s nocou v 16. až 19. storočí. Kniha ponúka nielen fascinujúce informácie z období tmy, ale čitateľ v nej môže nájsť aj recept na lepší spánok v dnešnej epoche svetla.Dnes sa zvyčajne nemusíme báť, že nás v spánku niekto zabije či zamrzneme, ak ostaneme vonku pred zavretými mestskými bránami. Ani sa netreba deliť o posteľ s príbuznými alebo nebodaj s cudzími. Na druhej strane naša éra elektriny, neónov a svetelného smogu nás pripravila o mnohé zdravé spánkové návyky, ako aj radosti našich predkov. Noc v období tmy v niektorých ľuďoch vzbudzovala strach, no iní sa cítili oslobodení od spoločenských obmedzení; venovali sa popíjaniu, hazardu a iným roztopašiam. Jedno je však isté. Vrátiť sa z krčmy domov bolo bez svetla ťažšie ako dnes. Mnohé prebdené noci, o ktorých autor píše, sa preto končili v jame, priekope alebo v rieke. Spoznajte s nami tieto historické príbehy zo sveta, ktorý ožíval po západe slnka!Knihu rozšíril Tomáš Borovský štúdiou o vnímaní noci a tmy v našich podmienkach.

In 1797 the bloodiest mutiny ever suffered by the Royal Navy took place on the British frigate HMS Hermione off the coast of Puerto Rico. Jonathan Robbins, a reputed American sailor who had been impressed into service, made his way to American shores. President John Adams bowed to Britain’s request for his extradition. Convicted of murder and piracy by a court-martial in Jamaica, Robbins was hanged. Adams’s catastrophic miscalculation ignited a political firestorm, only to be fanned by Robbins’s failure to receive his constitutional rights of due process and trial by jury by an American court. American Sanctuary brilliantly lays out in riveting detail the story of how the Robbins affair, amid the turbulent presidential campaign of 1800, inflamed the new nation and set in motion a constitutional crisis, resulting in Adams’s defeat and Thomas Jefferson’s election as the third president of the United States. Robbins’s martyrdom led directly to the country’s historic decision to grant political asylum to foreign refugees—a major achievement in fulfilling the promise of American independence.

AT DAY'S CLOSE charts a fresh realm of Western culture, nocturnal life from the late medieval period to the Industrial revolution. The book focuses on the cadences of daily life, investigating night time in its own right and resurrecting a rich and complex universe in which persons passed nearly half of their lives - a world, long-lost to historians, of blanket fairs, night freaks, and curtain lectures, of sun-suckers, moon-cursers and night-kings. It is not only the vocabulary that has disappeared., AT DAY'S CLOSE will restitute many facts which have been either lost or forgotten (for example, that our ancestral sleepers slept in two phases during the night with an active waking period in-between). It is a significant and newsworthy contribution to social history, filled with substantial research, stories and new discoveries. Ekirch uses a wide range of sources to reconstruct how the night was lived in the past : travel accounts, memoirs, letters, poems, plays, court records, coroner's reports, depositions and laws dealing with curfews, crime and lighting. He has analysed working-class autobiographies, proverbs, nursery rhymes, ballads and sermons, and folklore, as well as consulting medical, psychological and anthropological papers. The result is a truly fascinating overview of an unknown slice of history.

A. Roger Ekirch präsentiert in seinem Buch eine umfassende Darstellung der Nacht vor dem industriellen Zeitalter. Er beleuchtet die Dunkelheit als Zeit mit eigenen Ritualen, Ängsten und Freiheiten, die zugleich Raum für Erholung und Aberglauben, aber auch für böse Geister und Verbrechen war.