At Home - Wyrms.de

Published Nov. 10, 2012 by Doubleday Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-385-53728-5

(1 review)

At Home: A Short History of Private Life is a history of domestic life written by Bill Bryson. It was published in May 2010. The book covers topics of the commerce, architecture, technology and geography that have shaped homes into what they are today, told through a series of "tours" through Bryson's Norfolk rectory that quickly digress into the history of each particular room.

18 editions

Michael Gouker reviewed At Home by Bill Bryson

Review of 'At Home' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I found this book to be very illuminating. It is well-researched, but it reads more like a conversation than a history treatise. Bryson introduces characters who recur in the story, but in different roles. The end result is a fullness of understanding that is beyond the sum of the facts. In short, you are immersed in their history through their lives.

One thought I had towards the end - after the discussion of how children are treated - is how people will look on us in the future. Certainly our society will seem strange to them too, right? I actually spent the last chapter with this in my mind and it may have taken away from the discussion of the landed gentry's troubles, along with the plight of the good parson.

It was a very enjoyable book. I do enjoy his style and it's inevitable that it suffers a comparison …

I found this book to be very illuminating. It is well-researched, but it reads more like a conversation than a history treatise. Bryson introduces characters who recur in the story, but in different roles. The end result is a fullness of understanding that is beyond the sum of the facts. In short, you are immersed in their history through their lives.

One thought I had towards the end - after the discussion of how children are treated - is how people will look on us in the future. Certainly our society will seem strange to them too, right? I actually spent the last chapter with this in my mind and it may have taken away from the discussion of the landed gentry's troubles, along with the plight of the good parson.

It was a very enjoyable book. I do enjoy his style and it's inevitable that it suffers a comparison to "A Short History of Nearly Everything", which is imnsho, one of the best books for non-scientists to explain the world/universe/life/primordial history and for scientists to speak to other people about what they know. At Home pales a bit by comparison, but its value at framing ourselves in the context of human history is undeniable.

Wonderful!