At Home: A Short History of Private Life [B0816]

2011 PB in nice clean condition. In these pages, the beloved Bill Bryson gives us a fascinating history of the modern home, taking us on a room-by-room tour through his own house and using each room to explore the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and his sheer prose fluency makes At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "This is a great book. I have reread it several times and yet find something new every time. Bryson has an easy style about his writing."; "This book describes every room of a Georgian or Victorian house and what it was used for, but it goes beyond that. It connects the rooms to various aspects of pre-modern society (like the kitchen to food and agriculture, the dressing room to fashion, and the nursery to how children were raised). While I was familiar with many of the historical facts from reading a lot of classic literature, I found it all very interesting. The book also explained facts I didn't know, such as why the landed classes in England got much poorer near the end of the 19th century and why people with titles started marrying rich Americans. I definitely enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in history, especially that of Georgian and Victorian England."