Chairs: A History, by furniture authority Florence de Dampierre, is a wonderfully readable, profusely illustrated history of seating from the ancient world to the present. The sparkling text is full of surprising and fascinating information on historical personalities, fashion, custom and social life. Starting with the emergence of chairs in Pre-dynastic Egypt and progressing through the social uses and meaning of various forms of seats in Classic Greece and the Roman Empire, de Dampierre leads her reader through the chair's historical development in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the modern world, with interesting detours to China and Africa.