Barnes, David S. The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle Against Filth and Germs. 2006. An outstanding introduction to sanitary developments and attitudes toward public health.
Cioc, Mark. The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815–2000. 2002. An environmental history focused on the Rhine River, Europe’s most important commercial waterway.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. 2005. A lively investigation of the historical background to current practice.
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. 1991. A groundbreaking classic that places gender at the center of the construction of middle-class values, lifestyles, and livelihoods.
De Vries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1850 to the Present. 2008. A major interpretative analysis focusing on married couples and their strategies.
Kelly, Alfred. The German Worker: Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization. 1987. A superb collection of firsthand, primary-source accounts of working-class life, with an excellent introduction on German workers in general.
Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. 2006. A provocative, in-depth account of middle-class encounters with the London working class in the late nineteenth century.
Maynes, Mary Jo. Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers’ Biographies in the Era of Industrialization. 1995. Includes fascinating stories that provide insight into how workers saw themselves.
Perrot, Michelle, ed. A History of Private Life. 1990. A fascinating multivolume and multiauthor work that puts private life and family at the center of historical investigation.
Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. 1980. This important work changed the way historians think about sexuality and prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of the Finch: The Story of Evolution in Our Time. 1994. A prize-winning, highly readable account of Darwin and evolution.
DOCUMENTARIES
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC, 2009). Marking the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, the BBC produced this television documentary about Charles Darwin and his important theory of evolution.
George Eliot: A Scandalous Life (BBC, 2002). A documentary about the life of Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen name George Eliot.
Great Russian Writers: Leo Tolstoy (Kultur Video, 2006). A short documentary about the life and work of Leo Tolstoy.
FEATURE FILMS
Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, 2012). Based on Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel, the film focuses on Anna Karenina’s affair with Count Vronsky.
Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993). Nineteenth-century coal miners in northern France go on strike in response to repression by the authorities in this film based on Émile Zola’s classic realist novel.
Madame Bovary (Tim Fywell, 2000). A frustrated middle-class housewife named Emma Bovary has an adulterous love affair in this film adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s novel.
The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle, 1936). A dramatized biography of Louis Pasteur, the French chemist who developed the germ theory.
WEB SITES
Cholera and the Thames. A captivating Web site where one can learn about the problem of cholera in London in the nineteenth century. Includes essays, games, educational resources, and a gallery of images related to the topic. www.choleraandthethames.co.uk/
Haussmann. An overview of the life of Georges Haussmann and his transformation of Paris from 1858 to 1870. gallery.sjsu.edu/paris/architecture/Haussmann.html
History of Contraception: Nineteenth Century. A discussion of contraception, abortion, and other issues surrounding sexuality in the nineteenth century. www.glowm.com/?p=glowm.cml/section_view&articleid=375#21001
The Literature Network: Realism. An extended essay about realism in literature. The site also has biographies and links to works for several realist authors, including Balzac, Eliot, Flaubert, Hardy, Tolstoy, and Zola. www.online-literature.com/periods/realism.php