The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.'īill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. 'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. 'It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' Daily Telegraph 'Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson.an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book.' The Sunday Times They are where history ends up.Number One Bestseller in both hardback and paperback

As Bryson notes in the introduction, history is “masses of people doing ordinary things.” And the common house? “Houses aren’t refuges from history. Somehow, curiously but inevitably, all of these seemingly unconnected particulars fit together neatly within the framework of a house. Bryson’s English countryside home is a Victorian parsonage where “nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped.” But “this old house” makes a very convenient jumping-off point for a look at topics as far-reaching as the spice trade with the Moluccas (did you know that the difference between herbs and spices is that herbs come from the leafy parts of plants and spices come from the non-leafy parts?), the Eiffel Tower (Eiffel also designed the skeleton of the Statue of Liberty, whose fragile bronze shell is a mere 1/10” thick), bat warfare (the plan was to launch up to a million bomb-laden bats over Japan at the height of WWII when they came to roost, the bombs would go off, or so the theory went) and Samuel Pepys’ inadvertent descent into a basement afloat in human waste (“. Never has this been more the case than with his latest book, At Home.Īt Home builds upon his earlier work, A Short History of Nearly Everything, this time narrowing the scope of the investigation to the everyday things found within (and about) the home: the architecture the individual rooms the plumbing, electrical and communications systems the furniture.

And somehow I have to fit all that into the brief space of a review. Problem is, I also want to say that he is exceptionally insightful, that he sports a keen sense of the English language and its peccadilloes, and on and on. It is always difficult to review a Bill Bryson book, since I’m tempted to indulge in sweeping declarations (“Bill Bryson may well be the wittiest man on the planet,” for instance) and then support such bold assertions with numerous quotes from his book.

Bill bryson at home review