pickBetween a pick and a so-so, depending on one‘s tolerance for dry, academic style histories. So, while I found it a slog to get through at times, there was enough here that was fascinating and new to me and made me think more about how nighttime has changed so thoroughly since the early modern era.
“What‘s more, Thomas Wehr has found, ‘transitions to wakefulness are most likely to occur from REM periods that are especially intense,‘ typically accompanied by ‘particularly vivid dreams‘ distinguished by their ‘narrative quality,‘ which many subjects in his experiments contemplated in the darkness.”
“Night saved the day. As neighborhood forums, work parties gave vent to a day‘s most pressing events. News and gossip were brooded over and discussed before becoming disseminated on public streets...More broadly, these occasions provided a vital conduit for age old traditions, preserving and protecting the oral legacy of preindustrial communities.”
“Ultimately, night lay beyond government control, a natural law that neither courts nor constables could change. A tenacious fatalism, grounded in an awareness of God‘s omnipotence and man‘s frailty, undergirded the official mindset. Hence the well-known psalm, inscribed on an ancient building in the Danish town of Aalborg, ‘Unless the Lord watches over the city, in vain the watchman stands on guard.‘”
“It is a wonder that with the initial shades of darkness men and women did not flee to their beds, warily banking their fires first. And yet, for all of night‘s terrors, for all the dangers from demons, rouges, and poisonous damps, many persons retreated neither to their chambers nor even to their homes. Instead, they worked and played into the night.”
Enjoying some Wisconsin cheese that my parents brought me from their trip to Door County and starting a new book.
At Day's Close: Night in Times Past | 
