About
The Body Synopsis
`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. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.'
Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.
`What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson
About This Edition
Press Reviews
Bill Bryson Press Reviews
A directory of wonders. Extraordinary stories about the heart, lungs, genitals ... plus some anger and life advice - all delivered in the inimitable Bryson style -- Gavin Francis - Guardian
Remarkable ... Every page is dense with scientific facts written as vividly as a thriller, as well as answers to conundrums such as why we don't fall out of bed when we are asleep ... It is woven through with the kind of human stories that Bryson has made his trademark. - Mail on Sunday
Readable and useful ... witty, jargon-free prose that glides you through 400 pages. It's fun to read because it's not just comprehensive, but quirky. -- Richard Morrison - The Times
Through anecdotes about scientific history and startling facts that seem too extraordinary to be true-the DNA in one person, if stretched out, would measure billions of miles and reach beyond Pluto-Bryson draws the reader into his subject. ... Bryson's tone is both informative and inviting, encouraging the reader, throughout this exemplary work, to share the sense of wonder he expresses at how the body is constituted and what it is capable of. - Publishers' Weekly
Author
About Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to America for a few years but have now returned to the UK. He is the bestselling author of The Lost Continent, Mother Tongue, Neither Here Nor There, Made in America, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, Notes From a Big Country, Down Under and, most recently, A Short History of Nearly Everything. He is also the author of the bestselling African Diary (a charity book for CARE International).
More About Bill Bryson
