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* ).