I'm looking for suggestions of history books that relate what typical experience was like realistically for a given particular historical time period. What was daily life like for someone alive in ancient Egypt, or the Aztec empire, or a Chinese dynasty, or the Roman empire, or as a member of a native American tribe (pre-European invasion)? What were the daily struggles, how did people relax or entertain themselves, what did it look like, smell like, taste like living amongst one of these societies? What were the expectations or ambitions? Rites of passage?
And delivered in an entertaining read, not presented as a dry academic abstract?
by buppington
6 Comments
Not sure if its exactly what you are looking for but The Nine by Gwen Strauss is about nine women who survived the Holocaust and concentration camps. It details what their lives were like before and their involvement in the resistance and how their lives where like inside the camps and how they escaped. It’s a very moving book
Ian Mortimer’s “*Time Traveller’s Guide*” books for Medieval/Elizabethan/Regency Britain.
I’ve only read the medieval one but it was excellent. It’s focused on the practicalities of life in that time and place.
More recent history, but historical memoirs tend to give these details much more than normal history.
It’s a hefty one, but A Distant Mirror by Barbara W Tuchman does an exceptional job of relaying the day-to-day life of a person living in 14th century France. If the page-count discourages you, maybe the knowledge that approximately the first nine chapters or so of the book describe the life of “normal people” before specifically focusing on the life of Enguerrand de Coucy. I personally found the first part to be more interesting, the second half was a bit of a slog but the beginning was fascinating.
if you want to know about the roman empire you definitely need to read 24 hours in ancient rome by philip matyszak it does exactly what you are asking for it follows different normal people like a baker a gladiator and a slave for a single day instead of just talking about emperors and boring wars it tells you what the streets actually smelled like what they ate and how they lived their daily lives its super engaging and reads almost like a story rather than some dry academic textbook you will fly through it
Following this post as I too, am trying to find a book like this. Particularly if it follows Aztec or Mayan life.