At Home

The book opens with the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London and the vast glass building that housed it, a moment Bryson sees as the start of the modern world of comfort and consumer goods. From there, each room leads him off on long, entertaining detours. The kitchen inspires a history of food, spices and the dangers of adulterated ingredients; other rooms lead to salt, pepper and the spice trade; the bathroom and bedroom bring tales of hygiene, illness and how people coped before modern medicine.

Bryson writes about architects and inventors, servants and their hard lives, the history of lighting, furniture and fashion, and the changing idea of privacy. His curiosity is infectious, and he has a gift for the telling detail and the absurd anecdote. Like his other histories, the book wanders freely, which some readers love and others find unfocused. It is best read slowly, a chapter at a time, with plenty of pauses to share the strangest facts with anyone nearby.

Entertaining, informative and full of surprises, a companion to A Short History of Nearly Everything. Readers will never look at a fork, a chair or a light switch in quite the same way again. About 592 pages in the Anchor paperback.