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A Short History of Private Life
A Short History of Private Life
A Short History of Private Life
By Bill Bryson
By Bill Bryson
By Bill Bryson
Read by Bill Bryson
Best Seller
Category: | World History | Home
Category: | World History | Home
Category: | World History | Home | Audiobooks
Paperback $19.00
Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9780767919395
Ebook $9.99
Oct 05, 2010 | ISBN 9780385533591
Audiobook Download $25.00
Oct 05, 2010 | 993 Minutes
Paperback $19.00
Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9780767919395
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$19.00
Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9780767919395
Buy from Other Retailers:
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Oct 05, 2010 | ISBN 9780385533591
Buy from Other Retailers:
-
Oct 05, 2010 | ISBN 9780307707505
993 Minutes
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About At Home
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 makesAt Homeone of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.
About At Home
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 makesAt Homeone of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.
About At Home
From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home.
“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.
Listen to a sample from At Home
Also by Bill Bryson
See all books by Bill Bryson
Also by Bill Bryson
See all books by Bill Bryson
Also by Bill Bryson
See all books by Bill Bryson
About Bill Bryson
BILL BRYSON’s bestselling books includeA Walk in the Woods,The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, andA Short History of Nearly Everything(which won the Aventis Prize in Britain and the Descartes Prize, the European Union’s highest literary award). He was… More about Bill Bryson
About Bill Bryson
BILL BRYSON’s bestselling books includeA Walk in the Woods,The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, andA Short History of Nearly Everything(which won the Aventis Prize in Britain and the Descartes Prize, the European Union’s highest literary award). He was… More about Bill Bryson
About Bill Bryson
BILL BRYSON’s bestselling books includeA Walk in the Woods,The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, andA Short History of Nearly Everything(which won the Aventis Prize in Britain and the Descartes Prize, the European Union’s highest literary award). He was… More about Bill Bryson
Product Details
Category: | World History | Home
Paperback | $19.00
Published by Anchor
Oct 04, 2011 | 592 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780767919395
Category: | World History | Home
Ebook | $9.99
Published by Anchor
Oct 05, 2010 | 512 Pages | ISBN 9780385533591
Category: | World History | Home | Audiobooks
Audiobook Download | $25.00
Published by Random House Audio
Oct 05, 2010 | 993 Minutes | ISBN 9780307707505
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Praise
“Delightful. . . . Bryson’s enthusiasm brightens any dull corner. . . . Hand over control and simply enjoy the ride.” –The New York Times Book Review
“An exuberant, shared social history. . . . Told with Bryson’s habitual brio. . . . A personal compendium of fascinating facts, suggesting how the history of houses and domesticity has shaped our lives, language, and ideas.” –The New York Review of Books
“A treasure trove. . . . Playful, yes, but Bryson is also a deft historian.” –Los Angeles Times
“If this book doesn’t supply you with five years’ worth of dinner conversation, you’re not paying attention.” –People
“Bryson is fascinated by everything, and his curiosity is infectious. . . . You can take this class in your pajamas—and, judging by the book’s laid-back, comfy tone, I have a sneaking suspicion that Bryson wrote much of it in his.” –New York Times Book Review
“The experience of reading a Bill Bryson book is something you don’t want to stop—a pip and a spree and, almost incidentally, a serious education. And never tiresome, for Bryson has the gift of being the student and not the tutor.” –Washington Post
“At Home is both insightful and entertaining, leaving a deeper appreciation of the stuff of home life that will never again be viewed as mundane.” –Seattle Times
“Readers who enjoyed Mr. Bryson’s apparently inexhaustible supply of nifty facts in such previous books as “A Short History of Nearly Everything” (2004) or “The Mother Tongue” (1991) will be happy to find the author’s pen as nimble and his narrative persona as genial as ever.” –Wall Street Journal
“Bryson serves up a rich banquet of utterly fascinating and sometimes horrifying facts of where and how people have slept, eaten, made a living, built homes and monuments, frolicked, traveled, given birth and been laid to rest.” –Bookreporter.com
“Its lasting impression is the author’s delightful, boundless curiosity. . . . The best nonfiction illuminates what we found impossible to see without it, and perhaps more so than any of his other wonderful books, At Home proves that Bryson writes some of the very best.” –”The AV Club,” The Onion
“Bryson writes with his usual slyly sassy humor. . . . The result makes for reading that charms as it informs.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Reading Bill Bryson is like having one of those friends around who’s always discovering something new—some pastime or place or piece of information—and can’t wait to breathlessly pass it along.” –Dallas Morning News
“Deliciously informative. . . . A treasure trove of facts in an engaging history of how we once lived.” –Richmond Times-Dispatch
“At Home is terrific. Bryson is a brilliant writer.” –The Charlotte Observer
“Bryson is the ultimate fact-filled uncle. . . . A delightful book filled with humor and astonishing facts.” –Vancouver Sun
Awards
YALSA Best Books for Young Adults WINNER 2014
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At Home
Category: | World History | Home
Category: | World History | Home
Category: | World History | Home | Audiobooks
At Home
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Paperback
Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9780767919395
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