At Day’s Close

**Remarkable.… Ekirch has emptied night’s pockets, and laid the contents out before us. —Arthur Krystal, *The New Yorker*** Bringing light to the shadows of history through a rich weave of citation and archival evidence ( *Publishers Weekly* ), scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historians—those that unfold at night. In this triumph of social history ( *Mail on Sunday* ), Ekirch’s enthralling anthropology ( *Harper’s* ) exposes the nightlife that spawned a distinct culture and a refuge from daily life. Fear of crime, of fire, and of the supernatural; the importance of moonlight; the increased incidence of sickness and death at night; evening gatherings to spin wool and stories; masqued balls; inns, taverns, and brothels; the strategies of thieves, assassins, and conspirators; the protective uses of incantations, meditations, and prayers; the nature of our predecessors’ sleep and dreams—Ekirch reveals all these and more in his monumental study ( *The Nation* ) of sociocultural history, maintaining throughout an infectious sense of wonder ( *Booklist* ).