At home : a short history of private life
(Adult Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

From the author of "A Short History of Nearly Everything", comes a work of what you might call domestic science: our homes, how they work, and the fascinating history of how they got that way. Bill Bryson lives in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as found in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house. Print run 50,000.