Travelers routinely used to bed down with complete strangers, and whole families shared beds in many preindustrial households. France's King Louis XIV ruled from his bedchamber, and so did Winston Churchill during World War II. In this sweeping social history spanning 70,000 years, Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani look at the endlessly varied role of the bed through time. This was a place for sex, death, childbirth, storytelling, and sociability as well as sleeping. But who did what with whom, why, and how could vary incredibly depending on the time and place, and as revealed here, it is only in the modern era that the bed has transformed into a private, hidden zone.