Reviews for At Home: A Short History of Private Life

The average rating for At Home: A Short History of Private Life based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-19 00:00:00 Robert Dombrowsky I came across a review that dismissed Bill Bryson's work as being entertaining fact collection that doesn't present anything new. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, if not the implication. There is nothing wrong with entertaining fact collection, and, in my mind, everything right with it. In this age of information overload, the kind of clear-minded research and fact-sorting he performs for his readers is manna sent from communication heaven. The ability (and the willingness) to collect, order, set out and present information in the most simple and logical way possible is something that I will always treasure in my favourite writers and thinkers. The desire to popularise science and historical research marks an author, for me, as intellectually generous. The fact that the book has such a logical flow is actually a triumph, arising primarily from the the way the facts have been organised. The hallmark of a good idea is the way it seems blindingly obvious in retrospect, and it must be said that it was very astute to choose the home as an organising metaphor, one with which every reader is familiar. A history of domestic life could just as easily been organised chronologically, for example. Or divided into discrete units by subject - 'servants', 'hygiene', 'architecture' - just like the school textbooks that turned us off this stuff in the first place. Using a tangible concept allows Bryson to create easily-visualised conceptual spaces from which to launch his explorations, allowing him ramble freely across history, linguistics and science without losing us. It allows him a safe space to create links between Victorian prudishness, evolution, poor houses and nursery rhymes without leaving us reeling in confusion. The judicious introduction of a smattering of already-familiar historical figures such as Washington, Jefferson, Columbus and Darwin also saves the narrative from spiralling into abstraction. In my view, the real magic in Bryson's brand of popular science is turning everyday items into objects of mystery. Why have pepper and salt become the only two condiments that feature on every western table? Why do forks have four tines and not five? Why do we cultivate lawns? Why do we have buttons on our jacket cuffs? Why are pigs eaten and dogs domesticated and not the other way around? Everything from our windows to our mattresses suddenly holds a story. I have enough of an aversion to the Dan Brown brand for it to have prevented me from reading any of his work, but I have the deepest admiration for the way he, in a similar manner, has been able to suggest that existing, accessible, tangible locations hold clues to a larger conspiracy. Injecting a little bit of play into everyday life is a marvellous thing. And stretching it a little further, it's not so different from Foursquare, which also transforms our everyday places into part of a broader narrative (in the case of Foursquare, a social narrative, in Bryson or Dan Brown's case, an historical narrative). Making us feel like we have a tangible connection to our own history is important for someone like me, and presumably some others of my generation, who don't feel it very often. Suddenly, the USA's AT&T, which I only know from its stranglehold over iPad contracts, is also Alexander Graham Bell's American Telephone & Telegraph company. The tobacco we smoke is the same stuff that the fifteenth-century American Indians were inhaling, and we're still eating stone age crops and using the names of their gods for the days of the week ('Tiw, Woden, Thor... and Woden's wife Frig'). I'm also a sucker for anything that links real life with the abstractions of language, and the book's full of etymological delicacies for language nerds. For example, we find out that the earlier incarnations of our 'toiletries' could be found on the 'toile' cloth on top of a dresser, 'banquet' comes from the french word for the benches people used to sit on, and the pantry or 'bread room' is derived from the latin word 'panna'. And why do we still say 'sleep tight'? Because we used to kip on mattresses supported by ropes that could be tightened by a key. On the other hand, the book also forces us to consider how abruptly different our current period is from most of the rest of human existence.For instance, Bryson tells me that although running water has been around since Caeser was a boy, adequate lighting and heating are luxuries that are extraordinarily recent. Even the weekend is a very young concept. Doctors haven't been washing their hands between patients for very long, and operations, anaesthetic, germs, vitamins and minerals were unknown terms not so long ago. People haven't been washing their whole bodies at all, or even parts of it regularly, for most of history. The logical consequence of all of this, as far as I can see, is for us to reconsider those things we take for granted, which is never a bad thing. For me, this is another way of disempowering the almighty status quo, calling into question the norms we take for granted by showing how they are culturally determined and stubbornly anchored to an historical context. It's easy to read, it's full of facts you can pull out during the next awkward silence. And, to quote Winnie the Pooh, 'it's more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy ones'

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-08 00:00:00 robert lombardi If Bill Bryson and Sarah Vowell wrote all the history texts, and Mary Roach wrote all the science texts, our society would be more educated and amused than anywhere on earth. I want to say that this book was a greatly informative text on the history of sanitation, architecture, anglo-saxon culture, farming, growth of cities, and society in general, but I'm afraid that would put you off. This is the story of his house in England. He takes us through each room discussing the history, scientific breakthroughs, and characters that helped create it. Through this device, we learn the history of English and American culture and everyday life. Bryson is such an entertaining and knowledgeable writer that he informs while amusing us. He tells the stories of numerous inventors and craftsmen that are important but obscure. He tells those fascinating incidents that make us laugh and ponder how we got to where we are today. I learned more from this book than I did from a year's worth of history classes in college. He is even a good reader-the audiobook is narrated by him and is often laugh out loud funny. Reading the book is laugh out loud funny too. More miraculously, he is the only author that both Rick and I read and agree on.