This is a very hard book to categorize. Ostensibly, it's a description of the author's home in England, but that really doesn't cover it. All I could think of as I was reading it was a great conversation. If we went to his home - an English parsonage built in 1851 - for dinner we would, of course, talk about the house, but like all really great conversation the talk would ramble off in every direction with stories that had nothing to do with this particular house or houses in general for that matter only to touch base again and ramble of in another direction. That a discussion of English parsonages could cover the building of the Erie canal and the use of children in coal mines is not something usually found in history books - but can be found in a great dinner conversation. The fact that it is so rambling and disjointed caused one reviewer on Amazon to give it a one star rating. Poor man. He missed the point. Try a little more wine and enjoy the conversation. I loved the book!