Another American male, I’m afraid, but a prime example of how popular non-fiction doesn’t have to dumb down to appeal. And it’s a sort of map book, an intriguing journey room-by-room through Bryson’s Victorian rectory in Norfolk, from the passage to the study to the garden, with heaps of fascinating social history folded in at each step. The note to self when reading this (and indeed most of Bryson) is: research more, write more clearly.
Sarah Broadhurst's view...
Bill Bryson turns is eyes inwards to look at the everyday things that add up to make the real history of the world. As he ventures around his house he discovers a multitude of things some fascinating, some disconcerting and all talked about in the style we have come to love and cherish from Mr Bryson.
Shortlisted for the Galaxy Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2010.
Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 29 May 2010.
At Home : A Short History of Private Life Synopsis
What does history really consists of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching, from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live.
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).
