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Bill Bryson

At Home (Illustrated Edition): A short history of private life Hardcover – November 7, 2013

by Bill Bryson (Author)

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What does history really consist 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, enhanced in this new edition by hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations.

Print length

560 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Doubleday
Publication date

November 7, 2013
Dimensions

7.95 x 1.46 x 9.96 inches
ISBN-10

9780857521385
ISBN-13

978-0857521385
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The Old English word for a slave was thrall, which is why when we are enslaved by an emotion we are enthralled.
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Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.
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It has been estimated that 60 percent of all the crops grown in the world today originated in the Americas.
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0857521381
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday; First edition. (November 7, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780857521385
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0857521385
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.95 x 1.46 x 9.96 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #744,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #725 in Historical Study Reference (Books)
- #754 in Residential Architecture
- #884 in History Encyclopedias

Customer Reviews:
3,235 ratings

About the author

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Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. For twenty years he lived in England, where he worked for the Times and the Independent, and wrote for most major British and American publications. His books include travel memoirs (Neither Here Nor There; The Lost Continent; Notes from a Small Island) and books on language (The Mother Tongue; Made in America). His account of his attempts to walk the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, was a huge New York Times bestseller. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and his four children.

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Elisabeth Gilliland

Do you have a go-to book?

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2019

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Do you have a go-to book? A book where, no matter HOW awful you're doing, you can go back to it and refer to it as the one that always entertains, that always educates, and ALWAYS lifts your spirits? Because this is mine.

I don't believe there has been a month gone by I've not mentioned something I have learned from Bill Bryson. His many books enlighten, open the world, and amaze with the panoply of knowledge. That, and he's good plain fun.

You will never regret having read this book

34 people found this helpful

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At Home is a delightful tour of the domestic space we occupy and love

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2018

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This is the year I have become a big fan of Bill Bryson! The reporter who was born in Iowa and lived a good portion of his life in Great Britain is a wonderful tour guide to the mundane realities of life and science. In At Home he invites us into the Victorian vicarage where he lived for many years. We tour the home exploring each room such as the bathroom, bedroom, garden, dining room, cellar etc. We learn all about furniture, food consumption, clothing, crops, tea, salt, pepper and many other fascinating subjects. He traces the growth of industry and technology as the industrial revolution is examined. We learn much about how people in the past had to deal with disease, death, childbirth, education and existing from day to day. The past was a different country where life was often hard, brutal and short. Bryson is a man of erudition and wit who takes us into how ordinary people have lived in the past. This is a long book which is a great way to learn history and science in a painless way. Bill Bryson is a national treasure and you cannot go wrong in reading any of his books; this book published in 2010 is a gem!

31 people found this helpful

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Bama Fan

Bryson is the most ADHD author ever.....and it makes him create fantastic work!

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2020

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This book is not just an exhaustive look on each room within a house and the history of how people utilized those rooms, but it also highlights what life was like for people in different levels of society, the plight of servants and the pressure that the aristocracy felt in terms of maintaining a home and societal standards. In typical Bryson fashion, the text switches from a room to....the construction of the Eiffel Tower or the private lives of certain people all in a way in which you feel his infectious enthusiasm throughout the entirety of the book. In The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, Humboldt is described and someone with an insatiable curiosity and boundless energy and as I read Bryson's book, I feel that he is the present day version of this. Very insightful, goes into shallow depth about many different things and switches topics very frequently. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and if you're into quirky facts that you might see in a Vox video, enjoy history, or are looking for a way to learn new random facts, then this is the book for you!

2 people found this helpful

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keldemean

Bill Bryson Does Not Disappoint

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2020

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I did not quite know what to expect when I got this book. But having read others by Bryson I wasn’t worried about wasting time or money.
This could’ve been incredibly tedious; however the writing is excellent, engaging, interesting, and amusing. Until I read it I never knew that I actually WANTED to know about the genesis of so many things we would never otherwise think about.
It’s actually much more than that; I found that discovering the history, evolution, and use of everyday objects we take for granted (or barely even notice) to be fascinating.
Expect a well written, cheeky at times, detailed adventure of humanity from its beginnings via an exploration of...stuff. ;-]

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Living and Learning

Should Be Required High School Reading

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2013

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It didn't take me long to become a Bill Bryson fan and At Home is one of Bryson's finest works. With a great deal of creative elasticity (based on documented facts and sound references) Bryson covers much of British, as well as some European and American history all within the bounds of the 1851 Yorkshire rectory where Bryson takes up residence while living in England. I learned about more world-changing history and acquired more delightful trivia on Bryson's jaunt through his house than I had in the 58 years of my life. I felt that the last chapter of the book fizzled out in a disappointing way; fortunately, it is a very short chapter. All-in-all, Bryson's accounts and descriptions are, nonetheless, highly memorable. While Bryson never writes at a juvenile level (although he DOES enjoy the juvenile) and his works are certainly appreciated by the well-read adult, At Home should be required reading in all 10th grade history classes.

2 people found this helpful

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Cowboy Bob

Be Prepared To Learn, Whether You Expected to Or Not

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2013

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I've read many of Bill Bryson's work. so I know to expect to be entertained with a smooth writing style and an incredible and sometimes subtle display of wit. This book does not disappoint on either score, but goes one better. Like his 'A Short History of Just About Everything', this book will also through an enormous amount of information your way, and even if you only catch a small percentage of it, you will walk away all the better for it. Using the rooms of his house as a jumping off point, you will go on a merry chase through the history of that room in general, the history of that room in his particular house, and how we use that room now. This is done by seamlessly weaving the facts into a rich fabric of stories and anecdotes that will keep you turning the page. If history classes were taught more like Bill Bryson writes, we would probably have a lot more historians.

One person found this helpful

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Jeremy Walton

Master of the house

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2020

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- The largest number of people ever to be indoors at a single location is 92,000, at the Great Exhibition in 1851 [p50].

- Clergymen sometimes preached against the potato since it does not appear in the Bible [p131].

- Families used to move between their various properties a lot, requiring furniture to be portable, so chests and trunks usually had domed lids in order to throw off water during travel [p86].

- The aspidestra features prominently in Victorian photographs because it was the only flower which was immune to the effects of the gas which leaked from the lights [p184].

- The diamond pattern of different-coloured bricks used for decoration in a wall is called a diaper, from which the baby's undergarment - originally made from linen threads woven in a diamond pattern - gets its name [p291].

- Rats have sex up to twenty times a day [p348].

- The first person in America to slice potatoes lengthwise and fry them was Thomas Jefferson [p126].

- The expression "sleep tight" comes from the requirement to tighten the supporting lattice of ropes in a bed when they began to sag [p456].

- Buttons under the sleeve near the cuff of a jacket are the last relic of a fashion for attaching (useless) buttons in decorative patterns all over a coat [p538].

- In the face of objections to run a railway line through the middle of Stonehenge in the 19th century, an official pointed out that the site was "entirely out of repair, and not the slightest use to anyone now" [p615].

These are just a few of the interesting facts you'll learn (along with a few things you probably already knew - such as why British people are known as 'limeys') from this book. It's ostensibly inspired by the author wandering through the rooms of his house - hall, kitchen, dining room, bedroom and many more (it's a big house) - and using each location as a starting point for burrowing back in time, unearthing anecdotes, facts and biographies of personalities who contributed to making our world the way it is, and presenting them in his characteristic, pleasantly familiar discursive style.

Sometimes the connections between the location and the story appear tenuous: for example, the (truly fascinating) story of the building of the Eiffel Tower arises when in the passage between the kitchen and the rest of the house, as does an account of the inventions and character of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. In other places the link is more explicit: thus, visiting the bathroom brings forth a history of ablution, cleanliness and disease - particularly smallpox, which I (yet again) didn't know was named to distinguish it from the great pox, or syphilis.

Bryson has a teacher's gift for telling you things you didn't know (or want to know, such as infant mortality rates, or that flushing a toilet with the lid up "spews billions of microbes into the air") in an engaging fashion. His writing here lacks much of the humour which is on show in his other books, probably because that's usually employed in describing himself in a self-deprecating fashion, or his encounters with other people. Here, the author stays in the background, gently pointing out one intriguing vista after another. To be sure, not all discourses are successful, but it's a big book (belying its title) with a well-stocked bibliography and index, indicating the breadth and depth of the author's homework (hah!). Recommended.

8 people found this helpful

John Craske

At Home..And All Over the Place

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2017

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The title of this book is too limiting. 'At Home And All Over The Place' would have been more accurate. So if you are expecting a book which concentrates in an academic way on the development of the home over the centuries, then you'll be sorely disappointed. But what the hell - it's an interesting read and written in Bryson's usual engaging style. Did I learn anything? Yes, lots of things. Will I remember most of the things I learned? Nope. Is the book worth buying? Yes, if you want to while away a happy hour or three.. And that's good enough for me.

36 people found this helpful

Brenda Young

A brilliant, unput-downable historical document

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2020

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At Home; a short history of private life. (Bill Bryson)

I never cease to be amazed at the vast range of Bill Bryson’s sources, or the depth and intensity of his research. Here, once again, he has delved deeply into the minute histories behind the growth and development of every room in the house, his starting point being his own home in Norfolk, which set out as a Rectory, and is still so-called.

His revelations cover centuries of discoveries and inventions, as well as the lives, loves, highs and lows, and extremes of character of those responsible for them. To describe this book as less than utterly riveting would be doing it an injustice.

8 people found this helpful

Mick Stearbs

At Home With Bill

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 22, 2020

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I've always enjoyed Bill Bryson's writings.. He can make the unlikeliest subjects not just interesting but fascinating. This book is no exception, being packed with the sort of facts that make you want to repeat them to everyone you know (and probably turn into a first-class bore!) - such as the origins of the names of various parts of the house (did you know that 'pantry' comes from the French word for bread?) and the fact that the hall was once the most important part of a house.

The book is well laid out and goes through the history of the home room by room. But more than that is also covers lifestyles though the ages, including a chapter about the sad, strenuous life endured by servants. There are numerous 'potted biographies' of people famous, infamous and almost anonymous, who helped shape our way of life, whether landscape gardeners, engineers or inventors.

But what makes the book areal delight is Bryson's literary style, full of humour and with his own personal touches. It's like being in the presence of an old friend who has a lot to say.

The whole is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, an entertaining, compulsive read.

3 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

A One Book Isolation Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

This may be my last Bill Bryson read (and have read several) and I am giving up on the book after 400 hundred pages and with 200 to go. For me it might have been a book called 'Hooks and Digressions'. Bill Bryson has greased facility in gathering information and shaping it for his retelling. He I'd rather something more directly related to the subject than may of 'orbital' stories. Some are fine - truly - but too many are not. It may be that there is an acceptance that his are the kind of books to take away as a holiday read, or something for when you are in isolation with nothing else to read (or you need to get off to sleep). And, by the way, his take on bats will need some post Covid-19 revision. Disappointed and annoyed that I did not want to see the book to the end. It will be donated to my usual charity shop.

4 people found this helpful

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