At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Author:
Genres: Crafts, Hobbies & Home, Engineering & Transportation
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Crafts, Hobbies & Home, Engineering & Transportation
Book Type: Paperback
Helpful Score: 1
The same way Bill Bryson entertained and guided me along the Appalachian Trails in A Walk In The Woods, he's provided here in At Home a thorough and thoroughly enjoyable education on the history of all things home-related! Bill Bryson is an American, and the house he describes in this book was originally built as a rectory in the British village in Norfolk.
Each chapter is based on a separate room, and I think the funniest section is Chapter XVI The Bathroom; in it for example Bryce describes the uber-modest Victorians' transition from bathing-averse to bathing-happy. "What really got the Victorians to turn to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing... Many diaries record how people had to break the ice in their washbasins in order to ablute in the morning... One early type of shower was so ferocious that users had to don protective headgear before stepping in lest they be beaten senseless by their own plumbing."
Each chapter is based on a separate room, and I think the funniest section is Chapter XVI The Bathroom; in it for example Bryce describes the uber-modest Victorians' transition from bathing-averse to bathing-happy. "What really got the Victorians to turn to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing... Many diaries record how people had to break the ice in their washbasins in order to ablute in the morning... One early type of shower was so ferocious that users had to don protective headgear before stepping in lest they be beaten senseless by their own plumbing."
