From the author of the award-winning Metropolis, this is a detailed, educational portrayal of a range of dwellings, including a palace, an igloo, a whaling ship, a monastery and a space station, showing how people have lived in every era and all over the world. The author introduces historical figures including Shakespeare, Monet and Thomas Jefferson, and takes the reader around their homes. He ventures inside Pontius Pilate's Roman villa, sits down at a raucus family dinner in a medieval peasant cottage in Flanders, and looks into a 1930s New York appartment building.