PENGUIN At home: a short history of private life

This book is interesting and very informative. It is like having a professor in a book. It is a lot of information but it is presented in a way that makes it an enjoyable read.

Comprei para oferecer como presente de aniversário e o aniversariante ficou muito feliz. Está a lê-lo agora e a adorar.

Such witty and fun reading, you can't be disappointed if you like Bill Bryson. Though as a travel-book writer he's at his best, in Home you can find many hints and touches of smart stories through history, science and traditions.

Este me parece uno de los mejores libros de Bryson. Es sorprendente la cantidad de información contenida en el libro y, como de costumbre, el estilo es sumamente ameno.

Imagine, if you please, that you are a teenager visiting an elderly uncle at his country estate. When he offers to show you around his home, you accept his suggestion out of politeness, although you suspect that he will turn out to be a bore. By the end of the day, you have seen all the rooms and – contrary to your expectations – Uncle Bill has completely captivated you with his stories!This is no ordinary uncle. Bill Bryson is a well-known American-English journalist and author, whose repertoire spans popular science, architecture, geography, history and much else. In this book, he turns his gaze towards the rooms in his own residence – and regales the reader with stories inspired by each of them.The house described in this book was built by Thomas Marsham, an English clergyman in 1851 (exactly a hundred years before the birth of the author). Not surprisingly, we learn a lot about Victorian England – be it the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 or the stately homes of the aristocracy, with their grand gardens and armies of domestic staff. But there was a flip side too: “In twelve years eight railway termini opened in London. The scale of disruption – the trenches, the muddy excavations, the congestion of wagons and other vehicles, the smoke, the din, the clutter – that came from filling the city with railways, bridges, sewers, pumping stations, power stations, underground lines and all the rest meant that Victorian London was not just the biggest city in the world, but the noisiest, foulest, muddiest, busiest, most choked and dug-over place the world had ever seen.”The preceding era of the Industrial Revolution had been even worse, as the following excerpts from Chapter 18 will reveal: “For those dependent on casual labour, existence was an endless lottery. One-third of the inhabitants of Central London were estimated in 1750 to go to bed each night ‘almost Pennyless’ and the proportion only worsened as time went on. Casual labourers seldom knew when they woke in the morning whether they would earn enough that day to eat…”The author does not confine himself to the British Isles. We learn quite a bit about American history; including details of Monticello and Mount Vernon, the cherished homes built by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington respectively. We are also informed about the many varieties of plants which were taken from the New World to the Old: “… the azalea, aster, camellia, catalpa, euphorbia, hydrangea, rhododendron, rudbeckia, Virginia creeper, wild cherry and many types of ferns, shrubs, trees and vines.”As for India, Chapter 8 talks about spices and Chapter 17 discusses cotton farming. To my mind, the most interesting part of the book is the connection between India, China and America, whose destinies were tied together by the unlikely trio of opium, tea and sugar.At first glance, it appears that the book is just disjointed trivia. But more details emerge as one proceeds from one chapter to the next and the reader realizes that Bryson is much more than a connoisseur of trivia. This book is not only a comprehensive social history, but it also contains valuable biographical material on dozens of famous persons – including Thomas Edison, Gustave Eiffel, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell and the Italian architect Palladio.The author displays both wit and wisdom in this book. Consider, for example, the following description of Eiffel Tower: “Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent and gloriously pointless at the same time.”To summarise, this is a wonderful book, from which each reader will find something to learn and to treasure.