At Home: A Short History of Private Life
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From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life. The Barnes & Noble Review The whole book is like this, and you simply have to surrender to it. And that, I am happy to say, is easy enough, for Bryson really is a virtuoso of deft sketches of the enormous, mostly unintended, consequences of alterations in material life. In addition his wit is as engaging as ever, and his appreciation of human foible and earnest nonsense -- from Thomas Edison's concrete piano to the mystery of fish knives -- remains undimmed.
Introduction 1I The Year 7II The Setting 28III The Hall 44IV The Kitchen 66V The Scullery And Larder 86VI The Fuse Box 111VII The Drawing Room 135VIII The Dining Room 163IX The Cellar 191X The Passage 212XI The Study 237XII The Garden 255XIII The Plum Room 285XIV The Stairs 307XV The Bedroom 320XVI The Bathroom 344XVII The Dressing Room 374XVIII The Nursery 403XIX The Attic 432Acknowledgments 453Bibliography 455Illustration Credits 477Index 479
