Picard, Liza. Victorian London: The Tale of a City, 1840-1870.

NY: St. Martin, 2005.

There are a lot of “Everyday Life in [pick your time and place]” books out there and some of them are excellent for supplying the reader with an overview of the social history of some past era. This is one of the best of the genre that I have seen in some time.

Girouard, Mark. The English Town: A History of Urban Life.

New Haven: Yales University Press, 1990.

I’ve been an historian since I was quite young, even before I ever thought about what “history” meant. I’ve always lived more in the past and I’ve always perceived the world from the perspective of what came before, of how things got to be the way they are. My interests are very broad, from 11th century Norman military society, the role of the Germanic tribes in the decay of Rome, and pre-Columbian exploration, to the opening of the Santa Fe Trail, town-building on the American frontier, and the role of cavalry in the American Civil War. I have a special interest, though in what’s called “social history” — the story of ordinary people, acting on the world in the aggregate and upon each other, day by day, one at a time.