Disenchanted Night

Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night revelas the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subject including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.

Wolfgang Schivelbusch is a freelance writer who works in Berlin and New York. His prize-winning work The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century is also available from University of California Press.