It's a rare but wonderful thing when a review convinces you to read a book you might otherwise never encounter, much less read. It's not that Austerity Britain is a book I would avoid. In fact, even a brief description -- a close look at post-war Britain, including the use of several diaries by everyday people -- makes it sound eminently worthy. But it's also 700 pages, and if you're like me, the to-read pile is already teetering ominously several feet above your head.

But in this month's Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz writes a lengthy recommendation, and doesn't skimp on the praise. This is how he begins:

While writing his masterpiece, Portrait of an Age, the historian G. M. Young came to apprehend that “the real, central theme of History is not what happened, but what people felt about it when it was happening: in Philip Sidney’s phrase, ‘the affects, the whispering, the motions of the people.’” A historian will fulfill his promise, Young believed (he was quoting Frederic Maitland), only when “the thoughts of our fore fathers, their common thoughts about common things, will have become thinkable once more.” I haven’t read a history book that comes closer to realizing Young’s ideal than David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain.

The rest of the review is worth reading, and will likely send you in the book's direction. My copy just arrived today...