Book of the week: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

Bryson takes readers on a tour of his home in rural England, offering a history of the objects in each room and the functions they serve in people’s lives.

(Knopf, 512 pages, $29)

“If Bill Bryson hadn’t already published a book called A Short History of Nearly Everything,” that title would have done fine for this one, said James Walton in the London Daily Telegraph. In At Home, the always-amusing American writer takes readers on a tour of his longtime home in rural England, contemplating each room’s contents and the functions they serve in people’s lives. We learn the origins of salt and pepper shakers, how dogs were domesticated, and why doors in old homes tend to be so small. But each minor subject unfolds into countless others. Discussing the light bulb, for instance, Bryson segues into histories of whaling, early oil drilling, and the London Blitz. Bryson’s premise eventually comes to seem like a thin excuse for shoehorning “more or less anything he considers interesting” into a single book. “Happily for us, there are few better judges of what’s interesting.”

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