Book Review - At Home: A Short History of Private Life

It's another book review!  I rented At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson, digitally from the Boston Public Library.  Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors generally, and probably one of my top two favorite non-fiction writers.  What sets Bryson apart from other non-fiction writers is his sense of humor.  Although his books are not usually laugh-out-loud funny (although, they can be), a tremendous amount of information is always provided through a steady stream of wit, and At Home is no exception.  Bryson, an American living in a 19th century English rectory, goes through his home, room by room, detailing the history of each room and each room's place in history.  This might sound boring to some, but it really was absolutely fascinating.  Our conception of history is so often split between the rote names/dates/places approach of high school textbooks and the (often) laughably inaccurate portrayal of the past in period films, that it was incredibly refreshing to read about how real people actually lived throughout history.


The best thing I can say about this book is that it was completely and consistently interesting, which is not an easy thing for a writer to accomplish.  There were countless "ah-ha!" moments, denoting all the places that I learned something new about some fact that I had always taken for granted.  Many of these moments were even from little throwaway lines of historical and lexical explanation.  For example, did you know:

A macaroni

• The phrase "making your bed" came from a time in which all houses were one big room (known as "halls" - which is where buildings like the Royal Albert Hall get their names), and people would literally need to build a bed to sleep in every night and put it away every morning;
• A "change of air," which was often prescribed for numerous maladies in the Victorian era, may have been effective because the paint people used for the walls, which was full of lead and other toxins, was likely slowly poisoning everyone;
• "Drawing room" is a shortened form of "withdrawing room" - a room where the family could "withdraw" from the rest of the household;
• And, not really last but not at all least, a group of foppish, fashionable, and effeminate young men were once known as "macaroni," which greatly clarifies the song Yankee Doodle ("...stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni")?

As you might be able to tell, this book is essential for anyone interested in trivia or has ever wondered "why do we do that?" or "why do we call it that?"  Though the focus is on history from a human events perspective, there is also a great deal of writing on the various sciences, architecture, engineering, cuisine, medicine, art, archeology, and much more.  The narration itself is the perfect ratio of straight history to story.  Bryson often relates the facts and then drives them home by providing an example from a diary, letter, or anecdote.  As horribly cliche as it sounds, this method was wonderfully effective in essentially bringing the past to life.

My one real complaint (and it's a small one) is that, because Bryson uses his house more or less as an excuse to tell stories and explain facts, there were a few chapters in which the room and the history were only tangentially related.  In particular, in the Study chapter, Bryson focuses on humanity's history of cohabiting with different varieties of vermin, because his study is the unexplained favorite room of all the mice in his house.  While, interesting, I would have liked to know more about the study as a room in the same way that we learned about the kitchen or the bedroom.  Or, since the rectory didn't have a specific library, this chapter could have looked at the history of the private library, which was touched upon, but not nearly enough.  

The book starts with a description of the famous Crystal Palace of 1851.

My other, not-so-real complaint is that the book was far too short.  I want Bryson to go on a tour of historic homes around the world and just write about the history of all of them.  I would also pay good money for a special edition with more illustrations and photographs.  There are some sprinkled throughout the book, but I couldn't find much rhyme or reason behind what got an illustration and what didn't.  Drawings would have been particularly useful in the chapter that focused on architecture.  It got the point that I was wary of reading the book too far away from a machine with a Google Image search function.

As I said, though, these are very minor complaints.  Overall, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with even the remotest interest in the past.  One of the best parts about reading something by Bill Bryson is his enthusiasm for his topics.  As a reader, I felt like I was learning with Bryson, instead of from him.  I have no doubt that his books come from a combination of talent and much hard work, but, deep down, Bryson is that friend who finds out some fascinating fact and can't wait to tell everyone because it's just so interesting you guys.  Much like the plague and cholera that I now know maybe too much about, his excitement is infectious, and that turned an interesting book into a fascinating one.