How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture specialists as well as to general readers, this pathbreaking work brings together such disparate topics of analysis as climate, fire, food, clothing, the senses, and anxiety-especially about the night.

How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture specialists as well as to general readers, this pathbreaking work brings together such disparate topics of analysis as climate, fire, food, clothing, the senses, and anxiety-especially about the night.