At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Here is Bill Bryson’s entertaining and illuminating book about the history of the way we live - complete, unabridged and read by the author. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote 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. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way, he researched 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 he discovered that 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 p