From the palace hotels of the elite to cheap lodging houses, residential hotels have been an element of American urban life for nearly two hundred years. Since 1870, however, they have been the target of an official war led by people whose concept of home does not include the hotel. Do these residences constitute an essential housing resource, or are they, as charged, a public nuisance? Living Downtown, the first comprehensive social and cultural history of life in American residential hotels, adds a much-needed historical perspective to this ongoing debate. Creatively combining evidence from biographies, buildings and urban neighborhoods, workplace records, and housing policies, Paul Groth provides a definitive analysis of life in four price-differentiated types of downtown residence. He demonstrates that these hotels have played a valuable socioeconomic role as home to both long-term residents and temporary laborers. Also, the convenience of hotels has made them the residence of choice for a surprising number of Americans, from hobo author Boxcar Bertha to Calvin Coolidge. Groth examines the social and cultural objections to hotel households and the increasing efforts to eliminate them, which have led to the seemingly irrational destruction of millions of such housing units since 1960. He argues convincingly that these efforts have been a leading contributor to urban homelessness. This highly original and timely work aims to expand the concept of the American home and to recast accepted notions about the relationships among urban life, architecture, and the public management of residential environments.

The Boarding House for Single Gentlemen fits the category of the BBC's popular series Downton Abbey with the addition of French flair, tasty cuisine, and subtle humor. The year is 1886. Not far from the Champs-Élysées, on a boulevard that leads to the Bois de Boulogne, stands a mansion belonging to the twice-widowed Estelle de Chavignon, a former high-ranking courtesan. Estelle, now in her sixties, acquired the property through her charms and the house is still the crossroads for her former lovers and admirers. The quirky residents hide many secrets, not least Estelle herself who has withheld from her orphaned grandchildren the truth about their parents. And then there is Mariette, a kitchen scullion, who ascends the social ladder with a meteoric speed. But will she escape her servitude? Many of the envious servants hope not. The cast of characters also includes a retired world-famous hypnotist who still occasionally alters people's minds. With all this happening, the arrival of American guests adds a clash of cultures. The chapters are illustrated with pictures from the album Les Boulevards de Paris published in 1877. Here is what the early critics say about the novel: Be prepared for a rollicking good read With a cast of characters that will stay with you after you have finished reading and a plot with as many ups and downs as a roller-coaster ride, be prepared for a rollicking good read. This story has everything you could wish for an entertaining read: intrigue, love affairs, secrets, deceptions, even a touch of magic in the form of mind-altering hypnosis, all played out in Paris of the Belle Époque. Polansky's smooth prose lavishly laced with humour is a joy to read. Delicious, devious, and delightful The Boarding House transports you back to Paris during the enchanting Belle Époque period with a diverse ensemble of players: young and old, servants and socialites, French and foreign, polite and ill-mannered. It's delicious, devious, and delightful. Iva Polansky writes with a style and authenticity you might wonder if she was there in another life.

The second in the classic trilogy about the Eliots of Damerosehay. War has left David Eliot a changed man. Returning to the family home, he slowly begins to put the pieces of his life together. Tormented by the failure of her love affair with David five years earlier, Nadine has misgivings about bringing her family to live in the enchanting old inn close to the Damerosehay estate. But as the tranquil Hampshire countryside casts its spell, both families come to discover a measure of peace and contentment.

Publisher description

Boarding School Syndrome is an analysis of the trauma of the 'privileged' child sent to boarding school at a young age. Innovative and challenging, Joy Schaverien offers a psychological analysis of the long-established British and colonial preparatory and public boarding school tradition. Richly illustrated with pictures and the narratives of adult ex-boarders in psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how some forms of enduring distress in adult life may be traced back to the early losses of home and family. Developed from clinical research and informed by attachment and child development theories ‘Boarding School Syndrome’ is a new term that offers a theoretical framework on which the psychotherapeutic treatment of ex-boarders may build. Divided into four parts, History: In the Name of Privilege; Exile and Healing; Broken Attachments: A Hidden Trauma, and The Boarding School Body, the book includes vivid case studies of ex-boarders in psychotherapy. Their accounts reveal details of the suffering endured: loss, bereavement and captivity are sometimes compounded by physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Here, Joy Schaverien shows how many boarders adopt unconscious coping strategies including dissociative amnesia resulting in a psychological split between the 'home self' and the 'boarding school self'. This pattern may continue into adult life, causing difficulties in intimate relationships, generalized depression and separation anxiety amongst other forms of psychological distress. Boarding School Syndrome demonstrates how boarding school may damage those it is meant to be a reward and discusses the wider implications of this tradition. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, counsellors and others interested in the psychological, cultural and international legacy of this tradition including ex-boarders and their partners.

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; however, in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s. Anna’s Boarding House tells the story of one family’s journey.

THE FOURTH CLIFFEHAVEN NOVEL BY SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ELLIE DEAN February 1941. Can love survive in a time of war? Julie Harris is working in London’s East End as a midwife when a bombing raid destroys her family and the house she grew up in. All she has left is her motherless baby nephew William. Determined to uphold her promise to her sister to keep William safe until his father, Bill, returns from the war, she accepts a post as a midwife in Cliffehaven on the south-coast of England. Here they are taken under the wing of the Reilly family at the Beach View boarding house. But all too soon Julie learns that Bill is ‘missing in action’ and William falls dangerously ill. As she begins the long vigil by William’s beside, she fears she will lose the little boy she has grown to love as her own... A fabulous, heart-warming Second World War novel in Ellie Dean's bestselling Cliffehaven series (previously called the Beach View Boarding House series).