THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BED

This survey of horizontal social history is of soberer stripe than Reginald Beynolds' Beds (1952), although it has its own amusing moments; it is fully documented; it has notes, a bibliography and an index; its illustrations are an excellent escort to the text. Its material examines beds and furnishings, superstitions and life in the bedroom, birth, remarkable beds, the case for lying in bed (along with information on fleas, lice, bedbugs and the ), the mechanism of sleep and the tribulations of insomnia, the bed and love -- and the art of dying. Its quotations from writings about beds are often entertaining and its bedside manner is unhurried and soothing -- the whole should appeal to those readers who are pleased to discover unusual information about ordinary objects.