Intimate History

Famous Czech historian and author of many bestsellers presents life from antiquity to the Baroque

In history books and scholarly works we find information about rulers, famous battles, economy and art, but little or nothing about basic human needs.

The book Intimate History of No introduces the reader to what accompanied the everyday life of people from ancient times until the 19th century. The author's aim was not only to educate but above all to entertain the reader. And so, alongside basic historical facts, stories from life appear, whether from old chronicles or from Renaissance satirical literature. The selected documents or stories are not self-explanatory, but seek to put basic human needs in historical context and to explain what man was really like.

The book is the first work on the Czech literary market that deals in a reader-friendly and entertaining way with e.g. the history of washing, Toilet, accommodation, shaving and cutting hair, brothels, love practices and other manifestations of everyday life, from the mundane to the very intimate. It traces how natural human acts gradually became social taboos and how shame and embarrassment were born, all on a vast body of material from all over Europe.