Customer Reviews

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

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It is not possible to state, with any precision, what this book is about. It would probably be closer to say it is about just about everything as opposed to anything in particular. Mr Bryson uses the various rooms in his Victorian parsonage as inspiration for essay subjects and then skips onwards and upwards in ever more prodigious bounds to touch on the most disparate and delightful topics...

Did you know that ambergris is an intestinal accretion in sperm whales composed of partially digested squid beaks? I did know that actually, but it wasn't until I read this book that I learned that the substance has a vanilla like taste and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed eating it with eggs. Similarly, until delving into this rich little tome I remained totally ignorant of the unique method used by certain rats at a poultry market in Greenwich Village to steal eggs without breaking them (I won't spoil the book by spilling the secret here, though.)

Sometimes, Mr Bryson's research is a little shaky, indeed I noted one point where he is categorically wrong, but I bought this book for entertainment, not as a research tool for a doctoral thesis. Happily, that is exactly what I got.

Bill Bryson has an inquisitive mind; when he sets out to learn the history of the dining room, for example, he does so by way of tracing the history of the spice trade as it impacted Britain, which of course leads to a discussion of the East India Company, but which also leads to an explanation as to why salt and pepper are the common condiments found on every dining room table, as well as the arrival of tea and coffee to the UK, the reason why dinner moved from a midday meal to one sometimes quite late at night and much much more. His new book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, is a delightful wander through his own home, a former parsonage built in 1851, and while I'm not sure that I learned a lot about how specific rooms came to serve different purposes, I did learn a lot about, among other things, why the US became powerful when Canada did not (it has to do with the Erie Canal, which displaced the perfectly usable - and already existent - St. Lawrence Seaway as being the chief means of transporting goods to and from the interior of the continent), how cholera affected all classes though it was first considered a (deserved) disease of the poor, and why John Lubbock was so important to British history, yet so forgotten now. I read it straight through, but it would also work very well as a book to dip into from time to time, reading the odd chapter here and there, and giving one's brain the opportunity to absorb all the fascinating trivia included on every page. Highly recommended.

My husband and I moved here from the UK 5 years ago and Bill Bryson is his fav!! He enjoyed this book!

Bill Bryson uses the example of his English home, a Victorian parsonage, as he moves from room to room, to take us on a journey of the historical background of ordinary household rooms and objects. In his usual fashion, Bryson uses his enormous amount of research to amuse and amaze.

If you love Bill Bryson, you'll love this absolute mine of information. How he links each room of the house to the interesting facts is just amazing. I just got lost in it.

This book caught my attention, in part, because I have read other books by the author and enjoyed them. I was also drawn to the topic, which purported to be a short history on private life. Well, while I enjoyed it overall, the author definitely went off on tangents and did not really deliver what he promised.

The author used his own home, a nineteenth century rectory, as the starting point for each chapter, which is named after each room in his home, plus the garden. As he goes through each of the chapters, which are really somewhat like essays in which he ruminates about the room and the things associated with them, he does goes off in many directions that often have little to do with the room in question. It is as if each room were merely a vehicle for expounding on various historical references and issues that caught his fancy.

Still, I found it enjoyable and interesting, though I do wonder about some of the assertions the author made, especially since the book contained an extensive bibliography but no footnotes or sources for his "history". In the final analysis, the book is a hodgepodge of historical trivia, tidbits that are often interesting and amusing, but hardly elevate to a cohesive history of any kind. It is a work of pure self-indulgence by the author and a guilty pleasure for the reader.

For many of us, history is about battles and wars and well-known historical figures. But these events and those lives take place amidst centuries in which most people quietly live their lives striving for food, shelter and a degree of comfort. Bill Bryson realised that we can learn more about history by looking at the homes in which we live, and how they have developed.

This led Bill Bryson to journey around his own home, an old rectory in the UK. As he travelled from room to room, considering how the home developed and how the functions of rooms have evolved over time, his research and reading uncovered some fascinating information. The book is organised by room, and the history behind each room leads us through topics as diverse as architecture, electricity and the telephone, food preservation, the search for and use of spices, epidemics, toilets, crinolines and servants. In surveying his home from cellar to attic, Bill Bryson provides information about the developments and inventions (such as the fireplace) that have enabled mankind to build bigger homes. The house Mr Bryson lives in was built in 1851, and while some aspects of the original design will be familiar to most of us almost 160 years later, the house itself has been adapted for the world of relative comfort enabled by electricity.

I found this book fascinating. Reading about how homes have evolved: consider the hall. Once the hall was the most important part of a home, now it exists as an antechamber- a place for donning, shedding and storing hats and coats. Moving from a communal hall to rooms with separate functions and purposes took time, relative prosperity - and servants. The book is crammed with anecdotes and facts and is supported by a bibliography for those who want to do more reading about the various topics covered.

There is a sobering thought, rather than a neat ending, in the conclusion:

`The greatest possible irony would be if in our endless quest to fill our lives with comfort and happiness we created a world that had neither.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I had this book read to me, on cd,by the author Bill Bryson. I had me totally captivated and I was looking for excuses to go for a drive to listen to more.The book was recommeded by a friend in Viet Nam. I ordered it right away...it was in my mailbox within48 hours. The author starts his journey when he enters an old house in England and traces the history of every room in the house through out history and takes some very exciting trips tracing man,s history. It tought me so much about background of mans development and how things could have been so different if we had taken a slightly different direction in history. I was spell bound throughout. I ordered another book by the same author right away,also on cd. Cant wait!

With this book, it seems like Bill Bryson is trying to top 'Sunburned Country' for witty and interesting historical and quasi-scientific trivia. He hit it way out of the park. Extraordinary.

Another fascinating collection of historical facts and anecdotes from a master of chatty storytelling. However does he manage to uncover so many abstruse details? I love his friendly, rambley style of writing. "At Home" did not grab me as did Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything" but nevertheless an excellent read for plane or train, or just relaxing.