This internationally acclaimed investigation of emotions and personal relationships shows how people, past and present, escape from loneliness, fear and aimlessness, find New forms of affection and adventure, and can avoid being prisoners of their memories or mistakes. ‘One of the year’s most original and outstanding books...fascinating labyrinths of history and human experience, which he perceptively, instructively and absorbingly explores. This is a read to relish.’ —Financial Times ‘Theodore Zeldin’s all-embracing history of our feelings throughout the ages [is] brilliantly original and unsettling. His scope is dazzling. A seductive and unusually thought-provoking book.’ —Sunday Telegraph ‘Bubbling wit… Zeldin makes life exciting for the reader. It is like being on some careering fair-ground ride that whirls you from one limelit fragment of civilization to the next at breakneck speed… gatecrashing all the cultures of the world.’ —Spectator.