Throughout, Flanders notes how difficult it can be to research or understand what everyday houses and homes were like
over the
centuries; the versions
of «home» we see depicted in classic works
of art,
for example, were often idealized, and
there has been little impetus, historically, to preserve humble homes
for posterity (she offers the particularly stark example
of the incredible scarcity
of authentic examples
of slave
quarters in the American South).