At Home

a short history of private life

Hardcover, 497 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 2010 by Doubleday.

ISBN:
978-0-7679-1938-8
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OCLC Number:
503596086

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4 stars (8 reviews)

“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 …

18 editions

Review of 'At Home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Bill Bryson can somehow take the most mundane sounding of themes and turn it into an adventure spanning the globe with seemingly little effort. At Home: A Short History of Private Life takes readers on a magnificent journey spanning our entire existence and every facet of our lives and introduces us to people, places and events that have shaped our everyday lives whether we know it or not. Bill Bryson's great skill is in presenting facts and history that serve as a launching pad for you to think more closely about everything you encounter and to be curious about the smallest of things. Something like that cannot be praised highly enough.

It's one of those books that once you start reading it you will struggle to put it down. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you're at all familiar with Bill Bryson's other books then this is a …

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Subjects

  • Dwellings -- Psychological aspects
  • Dwellings -- Environmental aspects
  • Rooms -- Psychological aspects
  • Rooms -- Environmental aspects