The Diary of John Evelyn (volume 2 of 2)

Here is history not as it's taught, but as it's lived. John Evelyn's diary resumes in January 1665, and what unfolds is the most intimate portrait we have of English society collapsing into plague, war, and fire. Evelyn moves through this chaos as a man of contradictions: friend to Charles II, founder of the Royal Society, commissioner for sick seamen, and a father still grieving children who did not survive him. He records the Great Plague sweeping through London with the detached precision of a naturalist, then watches the Great Fire consume the city he loves. Yet amid catastrophe, Evelyn notices everything: the quality of the air, the rebuilding of St. Paul's, the books he reads, the trees he plants. This is Restoration England not from textbooks but from a thoughtful man who happened to be present at the creation of the modern world. For anyone who has read Pepys and wanted more, Evelyn offers a gentler, more reflective voice on the same vertiginous era.