At Home: A Short History of Private Life

From one of our most beloved authors, a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home--now richly illustrated with more than three hundred images.

National bestseller At Home is Bill Bryson's epic chronicle of domestic history. In this handsome new edition, his riveting room-by-room journey of discovery around his house--a Victorian parsonage in southern England--is enhanced by more than three hundred carefully curated illustrations, the large majority
of them in full color. As he did in the hugely successful A Short History of Nearly Everything: Illustrated Edition, Bryson complements his sparkling prose with striking illustrations selected from a wide array of sources to create a feast for the eyes as well as the mind. He has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive brains on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly mundane into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. When you've finished this book, you will see your house--and your daily life--in a new and revelatory light.
In Bill Bryson's hands, the bathroom provides the occasion for the history of hygie≠ the bedroom for an account of sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen for a discussion of nutrition and the spice trade. From architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets--and the brilliant, creative, and often eccentric minds behind them--Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world ends up in our houses, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.