Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife

From Georgian London's gaudy pleasure gardens to the glamor of Studio 54 to the birth of techno in post-industrial Detroit, a brilliantly researched history charting four centuries of nightlife

There is a specific energy to it. Cafes and shops close their shutters. Darkness descends. “The air begins to tingle,” wrote John Dos Passos of twenties New York. “It's tonight if you drink enough, talk enough, walk far enough, that the train of magical events will begin.”

Nightlife, defined by party ...