Intimní historie od antiky po baroko – Vondruška Vlastimil (2025)

In history textbooks and scientific works, we find information about rulers, famous battles, economies, and art, but we learn little or nothing about basic human needs. The book "Intimate History" introduces readers to what accompanied everyday life from ancient times to the 19th century. The author aims not only to educate the reader but primarily to entertain. Thus, 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-serving but strive to bring closer the basic human needs in historical contexts and clarify what a person actually was. The book is the first work on the Czech literary market that comprehensively addresses, in an accessible and entertaining way, the history of washing, toilets, accommodation, shaving and hair cutting, brothels, love practices, and other expressions of everyday life, from the ordinary to the very intimate. It traces how natural human actions gradually became social taboos and how shyness and shame were born, all based on extensive material from across Europe.