Speaking of "A World Lit Only By Fire", this is a recommendation to avoid the William Manchester book of the same title by any means humanly possible. It is a complete waste of any reasonably intelligent or sane person's time, containing a generous load of horse manure desguised as information. Even the average peron on the street should be able to figure out what a load it is by the time they reach the part about people being so poor that they had no clothes and ran around naked year round.

The book is only good for starting fires and toilet paper, don't waste your money.

We now return you maggots to Pieter's rant...

Did the woman never hear of candles or a kerosene lamp? How can you live in New England, where you are pretty much assured to be bereft of Electricity for at least several days every Winter due to downed lines from icing without a candle and a book of matches in the house? How horrifying - she had to interact with her children without being able to prop their no doubt pasty, doughy, overweight little bodies and dulled minds in front of the numbing cathode rays.... She might have actually had to play with them or tell them stories ! The Horror!

It is fun living without the Modern Amenities for about a week. I could go longer inside a solid structure like a Medieval house, perhaps indefinitely. When it comes to illness, injury, and Dentistry, give me our time and place any day of the week!