At Home: A short history of private life

Pdf Book Name: At Home: A short history of private life
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 178416187X
Year: 2010
Pages: 706
Language: English
File size: 7046 KB
File format: PDF

At Home: A short history of private life Pdf Book Description:

In these pages, the treasured Bill Bryson gives us an intriguing history of this contemporary residence, taking us onto a room-by-room excursion through his own home and employing every room to learn more about the huge history of the national artifacts we all take for granted.Since he takes us through the background of our contemporary conveniences, Bryson shows that anything occurs in the world finally ends up in our house, from the paint, the plumbing, the cushions, and each item of furniture. Bryson has among the liveliest, most curious minds on Earth, and his utter prose fluency makes At Home among the most entertaining novels ever written about personal life. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business – eating, sleeping and merely endeavoring to get more comfortable.

And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and on the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. And he discovered that, although there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement and even a little danger – lurking in the corners of every home. Where A Short History of Nearly Everything was a sweeping panorama of the world, the universe and everything, At Home peers at private life through a microscope. Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live.