"Alain Corbin is one of the most innovative and stimulating historians of modern France, who has pioneered new directions in the social and cultural history of the recent past. He applies to modern society techniques and approaches usually confined to medieval and early modern history. In several already classic works, he explores the history and anthropology of sensation, a quest ... Read moretaken further in this remarkable volume of essays. It covers an admirable range of the unexpected, including the measurement of time; the meanings of body linen; sex; and bloodshed in Paris. He wears his scholarship lightly, is unfailingly thought-provoking, and writes with passion and compassion both for the specialist, and for the general reader." Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge "Good social and cultural historians are both fact-bound and original at once, so the requirements for being either keep rising ... none succeeds more impressively in both fields than Alain Corbin. Corbin's thirteen chapters ... make a great little book not least because of their very diversity." Journal of Social History "Corbin is one of France's best historians of the nineteenth century; he is indisputably the most adventuresome. For readers interested in a sampling of one of France's most daring historians, this book is a good place to start." Choice Show Less