At Home: A Short History of Private Life (edition 2011)

A light and interesting read, but if you've already read some of the source material Bryson uses (in my case Judith Flanders and Mark Girouard in particular and also Liza Picard who herself is a pop history writer) you quickly realise how much he "borrows" wholesale, even to the point of using the same quotes as the original authors.

This book is pure pop history. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but if you're looking for more substantial information about the subject matter you should go straight to the extensive and excellent bibliography at the end. ( )

At Home has a very interesting concept, the idea of doing a history of private life through examining the rooms of Bryson's own home, a country parsonage. Obviously, that's somewhat limiting -- or you'd think it would be -- yet somehow Bryson manages to touch on millenia of history, and cover most of Europe plus North America in the process. It makes for a book with almost startling digressions, with occasional clumsy transitions back to the real topic, and it certainly has its dull points. It does have a lot of interesting info in there, though, about architectural designs and trends, about the development of things we take for granted now like bathrooms, and the original use of rooms in the house we don't really think about anymore (e.g. the drawing room).

It's mostly unobjectionable, too, with exceptions being (of course) the European-centric discussion -- which he acknowledges as being part of the way he could cut such a huge topic down into a single book -- and his tendency to snigger about people he deems to have been overweight. One part I couldn't make out was where he mentioned someone who was a "renowned sodomite" (or words to that effect) but "surprisingly" also a very brave man and good on the battlefield. What relation the two states have to each other is beyond me, and it's not clear if Bryson is quoting someone else or stating his own opinion. (Actually, that happens a lot in this book.)

Worth a read, but requires some patience. ( )

Bill Bryson's book 'At Home' is history of houses - how drawing room, living room came out to be, how building materials evolved around the years. So, I expected history of architectures and men like Chippendale and Heppelwhite who contributed to it. But little did I expect to read about the profiles of men such as Edison, Columbus and to realise that they were not quite as we thought them to be.


But, not only this, all stories of houses and men who contributed to it is interspersed with history of Skara Brae, America and England, interspersed with lot of interesting trivia. I learnt about locust swarms that hit plains of US and Canada in 1873, talented clergymen who were discoverers and scientists, their talented off springs or how F. D. Rooselvelt's family (his father) made the money via opium trade or that Darwin almost did not go to HMS Beagle lest his father was displeased.

Also, 'good old days' weren't really good. People died of common ailments, medicine was completely nascent. In fact, people preferred to die on their own than going to hospital and die in pain. There was no anesthesia, one queen actually died of dubious anesthesia. Masturbation was said to be guilty of causing lot of ailments. When women died after child-birth due to pueperal fever, docs would blame their morals when in fact it was their unwashed infected hands spreading infection from one uterus to another. Antiseptic practices in medicine took another century to set in.

There was lot of class divide. Number of servants one hired was also indicator of status. Rich were so dependent on servants one lord had no idea how to use toothpaste. Most epidemics (cholera etc.) were blamed on non-hygienic conditions of servants. While there was a period when people never had bath, not so much wet themselves, it was pride to be unkempt and filthy.

They had no bathrooms. They believed 'bathrooms were for the servants'. One French man declared he won't have a bathroom in his house since he was not building a hotel. (yes, hotels were first to have bathrooms.)

Sanitation was a problem in city of London, they had a period called 'Great Stink'. Also, city was sooty and foggy with dirt. New York was isolated and abandoned until Erie Canal was built.

Women's clothing have come a long way from cremolines, stays and weird make-up practices. (I have read longer version of evolution of women's dressing that coincided with women's suffrage movements) To look more beautiful, they drank Fowler's solution (arsenic) and applied cerumen ( a paste of white lead) - no wonder, beauty and health did not last long. Life expectancy of people was less, more infants died than many. Childhood didn't seem to be the best period of life either.

Now all these facts might sound grim but book isn't gloomy at all, rather all these stories are regaled in wry matter-of-fact tone. You read on hooked, interested to glimpse into the past and story of evolution. ( )

love this man and great on audio ( )

Bryson is not at his best in this exhaustive and far ranging history of private life. The structure of the house that he's imposed cripples his wide scope and brings a certain stilted feel to much of the way the information is presented.

It's still a very interesting and absorbing book, jam-packed with trivia both obscure and riveting. Bryson's an engaging writer with a wry sense of humor. I didn't see as much of his personality in this book as I'd like- there wasn't room, what with all the fact and factoids and digressions shoe-horned into every corner.

I was weary by the end, glad it was over. It's a book to dip into on a leisurely afternoon and then put down for a month, not a book to read straight through. ( )