At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Summary (from the publisher): "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.

Review: Yet another great Bill Bryson book. This chronicles the history of private life and explains why our domestic lives and homes look they way they do. Bryson works his way room by room through the home to explain the history and evolution of today's house. The book reads much like a conversation, segueing from a discussion of the use of candles in the home to the history of electricity. This book was filled with interesting tidbits — example: the old english word for slave was thrall, which is why when we are enslaved by an emotion we are enthralled by it. I learned a bit too much about the organisms we share our homes with (i.e. rats) and was dismayed to learn that relieving oneself in privacy is a relatively new concept (even George Washington's Mt. Vernon privy had two companion seats). Definitely an interesting read.

Stars: 4