There is a specific energy to it. Cafes and shops close their shutters. Darkness descends. “The air begins to tingle,” wrote John Dos Passos of twenties New York. “It’s tonight if you drink enough, talk enough, walk far enough, that the train of magical events will begin.”

Nightlife, as defined by party historian Imogen Willetts, is “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer a variety of pleasures at night.” Up All Night traces its history back to a surprising starting point: seventeenth-century Japan, in a remote party destination built outside the shogun’s capital. Nightlife has been at the frontier of popular culture and self-expression ever since, making cities famous, nurturing iconic countercultures, and growing into a multibillion-dollar industry, yet its sweeping history has been left largely untold.

Up All Night is the story of the good nights and the great ones. How did jazz develop in the dancehalls of turn-of-the-century New Orleans? What was it like to party in 1920s Paris? Why were we so obsessed with the messy chaos of the early aughts LA scene? And what, in our increasingly online lives, are we missing when we pass up the chance of a big night out? Join party historian Imogen Willetts for a guided tour behind the velvet rope of history’s wildest nights out.

Praise for Up All Night:

“From Edo period Japan to Downtown Manhattan in the 70s, Up All Night is a euphoric whirlwind of characters and incidents, not unlike a great night out. But it also does the serious and important work of considering what nightlife means today, when it’s at a low ebb almost everywhere, and what it has always meant: liberation for those at the margins and an essential beat for us all.”—Ross Perlin, author of Language City

“What’s the nightlife goss? It’s all here babes! From witches in moonlight to 1980s East Village to Margate 2026, Up All Night covers a vast expanse of nightlife. The research and detail is sublime: the perfect celebration of the place where the best of life happens. Get your glad rags on: we’re going out out.”—Amy Zing, co-founder of queer club collective Sink The Pink

“Most party people can’t remember how their night started – Imogen Willetts digs all the way back to the seventeenth century. Her thoroughly researched history of nightlife gives us a fizzy chronology of fine partying, with an emphasis on the expression, rebellion and escape that clubs and bars have always provided. I hereby raise a strong toast to this book, which gives historical evidence that a mad mix of music, cocktails and people in our face will never go away.”—Michael Musto, legendary cultural critic and chronicler of New York

“A jaunty, jam-packed history of big nights out that revels in spectacle and theatricality, happiest when bringing the reader into spaces that have been transformed by imaginative special effects.”—Emma Warren, author of Dance Your Way Home

“A sparkling cultural history: original in conception, prodigious in scope and written in appropriately high style. Its procession of nocturnal scenes is immersive, intoxicating and full of surprises.”—Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts

“Meticulously researched and dangerously fun. Up All Night is so vivid and insightful, I needed a lie down afterwords.”—Jodie Harsh, author of You Had to Be There