What was life really like for most Americans in centuries past? These stories recreate the lives and times of four different Colonial and Victorian era families, and as recorded in their own diaries, letters and personal memorabilia. What emerges is a picture of antique life often radically different from our modern portrayals, because our conceptions will always be based upon what we think and expect life was like "back then" - meaning mere generalizations that make these vanished times and places intelligible in the here and now. The people involved often envisioned themselves quite differently.

Through the stories in these chapters we enter into communion with individuals in most respects identical to ourselves and the people we meet each day. Did they experience the same sensations, joys and sorrows? The answer is, of course, yes. Our forebears certainly dressed and acted differently. But the antiquated constructs of Colonial and Victorian societies cannot efface the strong sense of shared humanity that exists between them and us, their descendents. Their world is accessible if we but take the time to seek it out.

There has never been a literal, impenetrable barrier between the past and present because the world of yesterday has been completely subsumed into the present. Everyone alive today is a reflection of everything that came before. Life is a continual accrual of vestigial traces, in an endless cycle of recurrence and regeneration. And recognition of this sameness imparts much meaning and context to the human experience.