Suggested Reading and Media Resources

• 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.

• Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC, 2009). Marking the bicentennial 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.

• 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.

• 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 by several Realist authors, including Balzac, Eliot, Flaubert, Hardy, Tolstoy, and Zola. www.online-literature.com/periods/realism.php