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At Home

a Short History of Private Life
Apr 03, 2014zipread rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
At Home --- Bill Bryson. Well done! Well done! It’s difficult to know into exactly which pigeon hole to stick this work by Bryson. But perhaps it doesn't matter. Is it technical history; economic history; cultural geography; social history. It has snatches of all of these things and aa lot more too. The glue that holds all these disparate elements together is, as you might have guessed, the home. The book is focused on England with nary a nod to anywhere else on the globe and it is focused primarily but not exclusively on the Victorian era. John Snow; the Crystal Palace; the cotton jenny; Paladin architecture; maize; Charles Darwin; Monticello; tines on forks; country estates: these are all part and parcel of this book. Prepare to be enlightened as well as entertained.