At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Author(s): Bill Bryson
Secondhand.
What does history really consists of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching,from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live.
Product Information
A huge publishing event, the irresistible new Bryson, now in paperback. At Home does for the history of the way we live what A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science.
Shortlisted for Galaxy National Book Awards: Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2010.
PRAISE FOR "AT HOME: A Short History of Private Life" ..".a delightful stroll through the history of domestic life. Now living in a 19th-century church rectory in Norfolk, England, the author decided to learn about the ordinary things of life by exploring each room in his house.... In a sense, Bryson's book is a history of "getting comfortable slowly..".. Informative, readable and great fun."--"Kirkus Reviews"(starred) "Delightful.... Considering our homes means a dash through history, politics, science, sex, and dozens of other fields. If this book doesn't supply you with five years' worth of dinner conversation, you're not paying attention."--"PEOPLE magazine "Fascinating.... Join this ambiable tour guide as he wanders through his house, a former rectory built in 1851 in a tranquil English village....
Bill Bryson's acclaimed A Short History of Nearly Everything won the Avensis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communication Prize. He is much loved for his bestselling travel books, from The Lost Continent to Notes from a Small Island and Down Under, and he has also written books about language and Shakespeare. His latest bestsellers are a memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and At Home.: A Short History of Private Life. www.billbryson.co.uk.
General Fields
- :
- : Transworld Publishers Limited
- : Black Swan
- : 0.56
- : 31 October 2010
- : 198mm X 128mm X 43mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 June 2011
- : 01 July 2016
- : books
Special Fields
- : Bill Bryson
- : Paperback
- : 611
- : English
- : 909
- : very good
- : 704
- : Illustrations