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Bill Bryson

At Home: A Short History of Private Life [AT HOME D] [Compact Disc] CD-ROM – October 31, 2010

by BillBryson (Author)

2,571 ratings

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October 31, 2010
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Product details

ASIN : B008N3I4LS
Publisher : RandomHouseAudioPublishingGroup (October 31, 2010)
Language : English

Best Sellers Rank: #10,257,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10,966 in History of Civilization & Culture
- #13,916 in Home Design & Construction (Books)
- #93,127 in Historical Study (Books)

Customer Reviews:
2,571 ratings

Customer reviews

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4 star		18%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
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Top reviews from the United States

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At Home is a delightful tour of the domestic space we occupy and love

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2018

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This is the year I have become a big fan of Bill Bryson! The reporter who was born in Iowa and lived a good portion of his life in Great Britain is a wonderful tour guide to the mundane realities of life and science. In At Home he invites us into the Victorian vicarage where he lived for many years. We tour the home exploring each room such as the bathroom, bedroom, garden, dining room, cellar etc. We learn all about furniture, food consumption, clothing, crops, tea, salt, pepper and many other fascinating subjects. He traces the growth of industry and technology as the industrial revolution is examined. We learn much about how people in the past had to deal with disease, death, childbirth, education and existing from day to day. The past was a different country where life was often hard, brutal and short. Bryson is a man of erudition and wit who takes us into how ordinary people have lived in the past. This is a long book which is a great way to learn history and science in a painless way. Bill Bryson is a national treasure and you cannot go wrong in reading any of his books; this book published in 2010 is a gem!

20 people found this helpful

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Elisabeth Gilliland

Do you have a go-to book?

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2019

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Do you have a go-to book? A book where, no matter HOW awful you're doing, you can go back to it and refer to it as the one that always entertains, that always educates, and ALWAYS lifts your spirits? Because this is mine.

I don't believe there has been a month gone by I've not mentioned something I have learned from Bill Bryson. His many books enlighten, open the world, and amaze with the panoply of knowledge. That, and he's good plain fun.

You will never regret having read this book

14 people found this helpful

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Kathryn Merrow

The History of Your Home, Bill Bryson's Home, and England

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2018

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LOVE THIS BOOK! I enjoyed every single page! It's a big book and took me forever because I only had time for several pages each time I picked it up. Learned SO much about the history of homes and of England. I even learned that Christopher Columbus didn't discover North America. I always enjoy a Bill Bryson book. He's an amazing author and has a wonderful way with words. I recommend any of his books. If you want to discover where people used to sleep, the origins of glass, how people lived...you can discover all that and more in these pages.

16 people found this helpful

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Janeite

Simply wonderful.

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2015

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Simply wonderful. I work at Winterthur Museum which is sometimes/often said to be the home of the world's foremost collection of American antiques. Guides were impassioned in their love for this book as it explained in great & wonderful detail everything that wonderful Winterthur is all about.

AND it has broad appeal. Knowing that my engineer spouse would find some fascination in it I plugged it into the car's CD player when we were locked in its embrace for 8 hours...& he loved it. We talked about finer points raised in the book endlessly & thoroughly enjoyed both the book & what would ordinarily be a painfully boring trip we know all too well.

For our next road trip I've got Bryson's book on 1927....I am just hoping he doesn't read it himself as he isn't the best representative of his own work. If you accept his Iowan birth, he comes across as stuffy & pretentious because of his diction which is full of British overtones having lived there so long. If you accept him as a citizen of the world, he can't honestly represent Des Moines. He should just shut up & write - a lot!

27 people found this helpful

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Reid McCormick

Interesting yet not expected...

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2020

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It is alarming how little I know. I consider myself a well-educated man but I am regularly flabbergasted by normal day items. I am not talking about modern technology like television, phones, or computers; I am referring to mattresses, carpet, clothes, cement, grass, stairs, etc.

Why is my home the way it is? Why do we still call it the Master Bedroom? Why do we call it a garage? Why are fireplaces so loved yet nearly useless?

Of course, I turned to Bill Bryson to answer these questions for me. A while back I read the amazing A Short History of Nearly Everything and I quickly put his other books on my list.

I finally got around to another robust work, At Home. Each chapter takes you through a room in his home, an old rectory in Norfolk, England. Each room launches Bryson into an interesting history lesson with exciting characters and forgotten episodes. Though I learned a lot, I was hoping for more history related to the house or houses in particular. Instead, the home tour is just a conduit for the information. There were several chapters I forgot what room we were in completely (luckily the header on top of each page kept me informed continuously). The chapter focused on the Drawing Room actually focused on architects and manufacturing. Though interesting, Bryson did little to breakdown the history of the Drawing Room, its development over the years and perhaps why the term has fallen out of favor recently.

If you are an enthusiast for random trivia, this is a book for you. If you are looking for something particular on homes, houses, or living areas this book will leave you wanting more.

4 people found this helpful

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Zoya Geacintov

Quite a nice book if you like this sort of thing

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2017

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I am really enjoying this book though I find I am forgetting what I've read almost as soon as I have read it! That is because there is SO much information in here! I enjoy Mr. Brysons writing, it is like listening to a charming and well read friend. If ind I prefer to own his books (rather than borrow from the library) so that I can jump in and out of the conversation or refer back to them. This one in particular is crammed full of the intriguing histories of all sorts of unnoticed daily spaces and objects. I feel as if I know my ancestors better after reading and therefore know myself a bit more. Quite a nice book if you like this sort of thing!

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

John Craske

At Home..And All Over the Place

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2017

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The title of this book is too limiting. 'At Home And All Over The Place' would have been more accurate. So if you are expecting a book which concentrates in an academic way on the development of the home over the centuries, then you'll be sorely disappointed. But what the hell - it's an interesting read and written in Bryson's usual engaging style. Did I learn anything? Yes, lots of things. Will I remember most of the things I learned? Nope. Is the book worth buying? Yes, if you want to while away a happy hour or three.. And that's good enough for me.

32 people found this helpful

Brenda Young

A brilliant, unput-downable historical document

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2020

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At Home; a short history of private life. (Bill Bryson)

I never cease to be amazed at the vast range of Bill Bryson’s sources, or the depth and intensity of his research. Here, once again, he has delved deeply into the minute histories behind the growth and development of every room in the house, his starting point being his own home in Norfolk, which set out as a Rectory, and is still so-called.

His revelations cover centuries of discoveries and inventions, as well as the lives, loves, highs and lows, and extremes of character of those responsible for them. To describe this book as less than utterly riveting would be doing it an injustice.

5 people found this helpful

Jeremy Walton

Master of the house

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2020

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- The largest number of people ever to be indoors at a single location is 92,000, at the Great Exhibition in 1851 [p50].

- Clergymen sometimes preached against the potato since it does not appear in the Bible [p131].

- Families used to move between their various properties a lot, requiring furniture to be portable, so chests and trunks usually had domed lids in order to throw off water during travel [p86].

- The aspidestra features prominently in Victorian photographs because it was the only flower which was immune to the effects of the gas which leaked from the lights [p184].

- The diamond pattern of different-coloured bricks used for decoration in a wall is called a diaper, from which the baby's undergarment - originally made from linen threads woven in a diamond pattern - gets its name [p291].

- Rats have sex up to twenty times a day [p348].

- The first person in America to slice potatoes lengthwise and fry them was Thomas Jefferson [p126].

- The expression "sleep tight" comes from the requirement to tighten the supporting lattice of ropes in a bed when they began to sag [p456].

- Buttons under the sleeve near the cuff of a jacket are the last relic of a fashion for attaching (useless) buttons in decorative patterns all over a coat [p538].

- In the face of objections to run a railway line through the middle of Stonehenge in the 19th century, an official pointed out that the site was "entirely out of repair, and not the slightest use to anyone now" [p615].

These are just a few of the interesting facts you'll learn (along with a few things you probably already knew - such as why British people are known as 'limeys') from this book. It's ostensibly inspired by the author wandering through the rooms of his house - hall, kitchen, dining room, bedroom and many more (it's a big house) - and using each location as a starting point for burrowing back in time, unearthing anecdotes, facts and biographies of personalities who contributed to making our world the way it is, and presenting them in his characteristic, pleasantly familiar discursive style.

Sometimes the connections between the location and the story appear tenuous: for example, the (truly fascinating) story of the building of the Eiffel Tower arises when in the passage between the kitchen and the rest of the house, as does an account of the inventions and character of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. In other places the link is more explicit: thus, visiting the bathroom brings forth a history of ablution, cleanliness and disease - particularly smallpox, which I (yet again) didn't know was named to distinguish it from the great pox, or syphilis.

Bryson has a teacher's gift for telling you things you didn't know (or want to know, such as infant mortality rates, or that flushing a toilet with the lid up "spews billions of microbes into the air") in an engaging fashion. His writing here lacks much of the humour which is on show in his other books, probably because that's usually employed in describing himself in a self-deprecating fashion, or his encounters with other people. Here, the author stays in the background, gently pointing out one intriguing vista after another. To be sure, not all discourses are successful, but it's a big book (belying its title) with a well-stocked bibliography and index, indicating the breadth and depth of the author's homework (hah!). Recommended.

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

A One Book Isolation Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2020

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This may be my last Bill Bryson read (and have read several) and I am giving up on the book after 400 hundred pages and with 200 to go. For me it might have been a book called 'Hooks and Digressions'. Bill Bryson has greased facility in gathering information and shaping it for his retelling. He I'd rather something more directly related to the subject than may of 'orbital' stories. Some are fine - truly - but too many are not. It may be that there is an acceptance that his are the kind of books to take away as a holiday read, or something for when you are in isolation with nothing else to read (or you need to get off to sleep). And, by the way, his take on bats will need some post Covid-19 revision. Disappointed and annoyed that I did not want to see the book to the end. It will be donated to my usual charity shop.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Fascinaing insight to the historic development of what we call 'home'

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 4, 2019

Verified Purchase

Loved this book - interesting facts & anecdotes throughout. Small highlight for me was to observe that official planning for the Great Exhibition was initially as confused, ill-advised and over-burdened with the dead hand of costly procrastinaton as modern contemporary political/governmental initiatives. Eventually it was technical lateral thinking by a gardener (a pretty special one, I admit) that saved the day. Cross the threshold - buy this book. Very enjoyable.

5 people found this helpful

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