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Want to know how to garden with lobsters? How to sober up? Grow a beard? Or simply how to make a perfect omelet? Look no further. Rather, look backward.

Based on the popular blog, Ask the Past is full of the wisdom of the ages–as well as the fad diets, zany pickup lines, and bacon Band-Aids of the ages. Drawn from centuries of antique texts by historian and bibliophile Elizabeth P. Archibald, Ask the Past offers a delightful array of advice both wise and weird.

Whether it’s eighteenth-century bedbug advice (sprinkle bed with gunpowder and let smolder), budget fashion tips of the Middle Ages (save on the clothes, splurge on the purse) or a sixteenth-century primer on seduction (hint: do no pass gas), Ask the Past is a wildly entertaining guide to life from the people who lived it first.

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"Lucky for her readers, Archibald has a wry wit and keen eye for absurdity. Some of the book's advice makes the past feel very far away...but much of it reminds of what we have in common with our ancestors, who also worried about attracting lovers, raising children, and killing bedbugs (the secret is gunpowder)."
Boston Globe
"Comical and illuminating."
Johns Hopkins Magazine

On Sale: May 5, 2015
Page Count: 304 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780316298896

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Elizabeth P. Archibald

About the Author

Yale-educated historian Elizabeth P. Archibald is an instructor at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins. Her research focuses on the history of education from antiquity to the Renaissance, as well as the history of books. She launched the blog Ask the Past in 2013.

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Elizabeth P. Archibald

About the Author