From the publisher’s description:
How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory.
Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture specialists as well as to general readers, this pathbreaking work brings together such disparate topics of analysis as climate, fire, food, clothing, the senses, and anxiety–especially about the night.
Crowley, John E. (NHC Fellow, 1995–96). The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. ISBN 9780801864377.