At Home, a short history of private life

The chosen book for the course is «At Home, a short history of private life», in the italian version «Breve Storia della Vita Privata» by Bill Bryson.
The author tries to tell the history of the world, the evolution of the habits and life conditions through centuries by starting from his house in the eastern England.
He analyzes each room by its history and the people who lived and worked there, passing through the objects that was used there, creating a sort of a documented stream of consciusness.
The main narrative feature is that of telling first the rumors about the history and then solving the reader's curiosity by the documented ones.

Here there's an extract form the main course blogsite, History of Things, that analyzes the history of a room starting from the evolution of the name.

'l Brichèt!

The english word match describes a "stick for striking fire" first used in the late 14c as macche. It comes from the word meiche (i.e. wick of a candle), from micca/miccia, from the Latin myxus, i, [Gk. mýxa].

The italian word fiammifero comes from the Latin flamma (fiamma) and fero (portare). Also named zolfanello from the chemical composition of its head.

The french word allumette, from the verb allumer [V. Latin alluminare], refers to the power of that stick to create the light.

The word brichèt from the piedmontese dialect comes from the french hriqitet, that is a metal stick used to produce sparks from a flint.

The chinese ideograms 火柴 [Huǒchái] refers to one of the five fundamentals elements, the fire [火] e the material used for the matches, wood [木].

Sources:
Etymonline.com
CNRTL Etymologie
Glossario etimologico Piemontese