We all make choices every day about which shoes to wear, but why do we choose the shoes we do?

Organised around four main types — boots, sneakers, high heels and sandals — Shoes: The Meaning of Style explores the history of shoes and how different types of footwear have come to mean different things about the people who wear them.

Along the way Elizabeth Semmelhack reveals the anecdotes and scandals, successes and failures, dislikes and obsessions of the makers, wearers and observers who helped to create the movements and fashions of footwear.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, Shoes is a thoroughly surprising history of an everyday item that will appeal not only to followers of fashion, but to those interested in social history and identity.