At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Written by Bill Bryson

Narrated by Bill Bryson

From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home.

“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage 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 he found it 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, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposi­tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307707505

Reviews for At Home

[richjj-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This reminded me of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I really loved. I feel like I have a lot to learn from social/cultural history and was really excited about this book, but I think I should have actually read it instead of listening to the audiobook. Bryson read it himself (with his vaguely British-American ambiguous accent) and it was a little too fast for all the densely-packed anecdotes and details. I wish I could have paced my own reading, so I could go back and re-read so many little parts. There isn't really a strong narrative, just a huge collection of associated histories affiliated with the chapter's topic, and if you're not paying attention you may miss 5 tidbits.

I learned many interesting facts explaining why western culture developed into what it is today, and how it strange it has been in the past. I think this book will end up on my reading list again in the future, and I hope I can better digest and retain it.

[spoko_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Having spotted several glaring inaccuracies as I read, I found it increasingly difficult to believe the facts that were outside my area of familiarity. It’s unfortunate, but a book like this stays afloat on the reader’s trust, and at some point it lost that for me.

[caedocyon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classic Bill Bryson at his most tangentially fascinating. I've been reading this gradually for about nine months and it's always a joy to pick up. Biggest downside is somewhat unexamined decision to focus on history of the western Europe and the US, but a book has to set boundaries somewhere....

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I won't lie - I got a bit bogged down with this book for a while but that was more to do with its length (over 600 pages). It's a book densely packed with historical facts on all sorts of subjects very vaguely tied to the different rooms in the parsonage. For instance, the chapter on the nursery focuses on child labour, child mortality and the way in which children were generally treated over several centuries in the different social classes, whilst the bedroom chapter covers everything from bed bugs to breast cancer to Victorian views on sexual appetite to mourning periods.

It's a fascinating book, covering an enormously wide period in history from early man to the late 20th century across many geographies, but with the biggest focus on 19th century Britain. Bryson covers a huge range of subject matters, from Thomas Jefferson's house in the States to people being accidentally buried alive to 17th century Britain's male penchant for wigs, peppered with his dry musings on events and practices.

It's a book that could easily have been 200 pages shorter and still been enjoyable - in places Bryson got a little carried away with imparting more detail than was necessary - but what I would have appreciated even more than further editing would have been more manageable chapter sizes. Given the density of the facts in this book, it's the type of book that I need to digest in short chunks when my reading time is limited to a short period before bed, and as Bryson had arranged the chapters around the rooms of his house sometimes they could be very long, which could be off-putting when I just wanted to dip in and out of it.

Nonetheless, if you enjoy books that cover wide historical topics there's plenty to enjoy in this book.

4 stars - hugely interesting, but its sheer size and arrangement made it feel like more of a slog at times than it deserves to be.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson's look at the history of the home reveals a so many things -- a long term view of that most intimate place, a new angle on history, and a multitude of facts, stories, and really interesting tidbits. He ranges over swathes of the history of things, much of it obscure and some of it startling. Like most Bryson books, it is a delightful read, luring you on to take in just one more chapter.

[smbass-223073 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lots of good interesting tidbits. But that was really all there was; interesting tidbits

[dualmon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bryson is always a great read

[robeik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson is a writer who needs no excuse to write. Entertaining as usual, Bryson tells us all about (mainly) UK social life through the last 300 years, on the pretext of describing what went on in the rooms of a former parsonage in which he lives in Norfolk. The rooms themselves barely get a look-in, but we are regaled with lots of facts and stories about the weird and wonderful people that made England what it is.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson's book is not really quite what I expected. His social history of England uses the setting of a home and its spaces or features to explore various topics relevant to the lives of those who once lived in these houses. He explores epidemiology (quite appropriate in 2020 with the pandemic), gardens, electricity, sewage, slavery, finances, education, and much more in the volume. The book lacks citation footnotes (even of the blind end note variety); however, it includes a nice bibliography. Some footnotes with further explanations do appear at the bottom of some pages, usually linked by an asterisk. The volume's size intimidates casual readers, but the author's engaging style will win most over, particularly if they approach the book a chapter per day.

[shazjhb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a well researched well written about a house. Not sure it is a book about a specific person or family but lots and lots of facts and people

[ken5me5old5mate · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I get excited when I pick up a Bill Bryson book but after a while I get disappointed. His first chapters are brilliant, really get you hooked but after that it gets diluted and distracted. There were times in this book where I could have sworn that he had just lifted out the stuff that his researchers had given him and pasted it in with minor modifications. You can almost detect a style change in the text.

It's as if he wants to fluff the book out with fact after fact and in the process he dilutes the content to the point that it becomes waffle.

Is it just me?

[jenniferelizabeth2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

very fun, very readable, but a bit random. No question I enjoyed it, but I love random earthy/domestic history. But I was wanting a bit more depth and relevance.

[arewenotben · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very entertaining, if meandering and unfocused - this really is all an excuse for Bryson to dump lots of interesting factoids he's discovered.

Bryson's breezy style feels a little at odds with some of the darker history he discusses and there's certainly little criticality - it does all feel like a slew of trivia rather than anything approaching a true history or wider contexts. It's also almost entirely focused on upper/middle classes (so much architecture!), men and extremely Anglo-American centric - essentially nowhere does he consider how the home develops outside of either the UK or USA, and the living conditions of the poor are barely discussed. He does explain this a little by using his own house as the model, but some of the tangents he goes off down feel very far removed from his quirky Norfolk ex-vicarage adode.

Saying that, as an audio-book read in Bryson's own dulcet tones it flew by and was exactly the distraction I needed in the past week.

[jeanbmac · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Informative as always, plus it's nice to be entertained while being informed.

[thomaspluck · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fun read that might give historians dyspepsia but was thoroughly entertaining even if focused on the English country home.

[francesanngray · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting compilation of loosely related trivia about life and society in the nineteenth century and how our modern world came to be..

[pdcread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not too bad, but not as good as his other books

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bryson’s Norfolk home, a former rectory, inspires this exploration of material culture and domestic life in Great Britain and the United States. The lengthy bibliography provides evidence of extensive research. Bryson and/or his publisher chose not to include end notes, probably as a space-saving measure. The bibliography includes the URL for a web page with “Notes on Sources,” but the page is no longer available. The lack of source notes limits the book’s usefulness to students and scholars.

Floor plans of the house are included at the back of the book following the index. If the location of the plans are mentioned in the introductory pages of the book, I missed it. I stumbled across the plans when I was looking for something in the index.

Some passages seemed familiar to me, probably because I listened to Steven Johnson’s How We Got to Now three or four years ago. Both books explore the history of electricity and lighting, refrigeration, and cleanliness. Bryson and Johnson both know how to connect with their readers, so readers who like one of these books will probably like the other also.

[lisahistory · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I spent the entire time wishing for footnotes. But as will all Bryson, the writing style and subject are captivating.

[tuckerresearch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like many a Bill Bryson work, this is a "here is what I, Bill Bryson, thinks is interesting" book, strung around a tour of his old Victorian home in England. Bryson tours each room and builds a story around them. Thus in the kitchen he talks about the history of food, in the bedroom he talks about sex, in the dressing room he talks about clothing, etc. It is interesting and you learn many new things. Bryson writes with enthusiasm and lucidity. He's clearly done his research. But, sometimes, he gets way outside the room to talk about things he likes. For instance, Darwin and evolution are hung around the attic in a very odd fashion. Also, I noticed this when I read his book on the English language, Bryson gives religion short shrift. His book on the English language did not really mention the impact of the King James Bible (or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) on the language, and here, besides a short section on rectors (since his house in old rectory) and Anglican Church parishes, he does not mention religion in the life of families, people, or the household. This is a quibbling failing in this book. I read the "Special Illustrated Edition," which carries the same text as the regular book (which I have too) but includes numerous photographs, images, and such, which make the text much more enjoyable.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This should have been a 5 Star review of a comprehensive and enlightening history of a house bought by Bill Bryson.

Instead, I am appalled by the overriding focus on the dollar sign wealth of mainly corrupt rich white men and their absurd women.

There is barely any mention of America and the British empire being founded on the horrors of slavery and the blinding racism which continues
into today. He mentions America's Gilded Age with NO reference to The Civil War. He praises Eli Whitney and his cotton gin with ZERO reference
to its resultant entrenchment of slavery. And so it goes throughout the book.

Being kind, this is an astonishingly denier approach to ANY history.

[eoin-311239 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.6 An entertaining collection of loosely related facts. Many moments, but lacking an over-arching whole. Worth it for Paxton or rats in teams.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a nice little ramble through some of the history of personal lives sparked by a ramble through an old house in England. Probably more than anyone wanted to know about the sewers and bathing frequency of previous centuries in Western Europe...

[xiaomarlo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lots of interesting tidbits, and an easy read. I'm not a very good non-fiction reader, but this was like reading a BBC documentary. Tons of fun.

[oacevedo-792047 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a wonderful book to listen to on my drives to and from work. Not only was it immensely fascinating, but Bill Bryson himself was very entertaining. I highly suggest it!

[skavlanj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book packed with interesting facts and stories. Bryson's device for relating all this, being a trip through his house, feels underdeveloped at times. He presents much more regarding events outside the house than within or about. He comes across as dismissive of religion while discussing Darwin and preachy about climate change, but a good read.

[addunn3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bryson takes a look the home through the early ages. Fascinating read with many interesting facts, especially the meanings of words we use every day. One of his best works.

[seschend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting read and fun, though frustrating from a writing standpoint. Were it not for Bill Bryson already being a brand author, this book would never have seen the light of day (in my opinion).

The structure, while engaging, is very very loose and he meanders from one trivia point to the next. It's less his touting world history as shown through his house and its rooms. It's more "Say, here's this room, and it reminds me of a story...did you know...."

Thus, this is a fun read if you only looking for cocktail party level details and trivia on history.

Still, if you're not a student of history or technology, this might serve as a great introduction. In fact, I'd recommend this as a way to get recalcitrant students interested in history by showing how seemingly disparate facts and details link more things together than they'd ever realize.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bill Bryson is great. He has an idea - simple, usually, but by the time he has spun it out it has become as complicated as all of creation - and he throws himself so thoroughly into its exploration that every page he writes is both edifying and entertaining. If I had a complaint about this book, it's that the premise - a history of civilization that is presented as a tour of the house - runs out of steam towards the end, where there is less to be said about the final few rooms than there is to say about history itself. 

[colleenrec-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It may be a short history, but it is an intensive one. Bryson uses the rooms of his home, an old English rectory, to contemplate every imaginable aspect of the modern life - all those things we now consider indispensable. It was much denser and more varied than I had thought it would be.