To keep these notes in bounds, I have not documented facts that can be readily checked in standard sources. Publication information is provided in the notes only for those sources not listed in the bibliography. Epigraph The universe is but a watch: Bernard de Fontenelle, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (London, 1803), p. 10. Preface xv The murder rate: Manuel Eisner, “Modernization, Self-Control, and Lethal Violence. The Long-Term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective,” British Journal of Criminology 41, no. 4 (2001). xv “a sooty Crust or Furr”: Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (New York: Penguin, 2004), p. 35, quoting John Evelyn. xv “a stinking, muddy, filth-bespattered”: J. H. Plumb, The First Four Georges (London: Fontana, 1981), p. 17. xvi The same barges: Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, p. 93. xvi When Shakespeare and his fellow: Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 107.
