Brief Lives

Loads of touching and fascinating details about the daily lives of contemporary figures, and anecdotes that bring them to life, like looking through small windows of time into their private lives. Any page has something of interest in it. We learn that Raleigh, for example, 'took a pipe of tobacco a......more

In an 1852 journal entry, Henry David Thoreau describes visiting the library in nearby Cambridge and looking over an aged volume by Samuel Purchas, possibly Hakluytus Posthumus (1625). The experience of reading the book, says Thoreau, was "like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sp......more

If John Aubrey were alive today, I imagine it'd be fantasticly entertaining to have a conversation with him down at the local watering hole, be it coffeehouse, pub, or disreputable tavern. He collected juicy bits of gossip the way some folk hoard stamps or comic books, and this book is a treasure-ho......more

This was soooo good. Lots of fun. It makes me want to learn more about Elizabethan England. As we gossip lovers say, it's juicy. I didn't realize how mathematics was all the rage back then. It was everyone's hobby. Like Suduku for smart people. Almost everyone was a clergyman and mathematician. Ther......more

John Aubrey was a real hoot.......more