AT HOME

-Bill Bryson

I really like Bill Bryson's work. A Walk in the Woods struck all the right chords about my favorite pastime, hiking. Although it did focus a little too morbidly on the various ways one might be killed by a bear. A lady at Jenny one year had just finished A Walk in the Woods before arriving and, convinced she would be mauled by a crazed bear, refused to take any hikes at all. Her husband was lucky to get her out of their cabin. That was also the year Kathie and I hiked over Paintbrush Divide and were greeted by lots of relieved guests and employees when we returned. It seemed that a mother Grisly and her cub were seen hanging out on the trail we took that morning. Katherine swears she heard a growl.

My favorite Bryson book is The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. It is a memoir of Bryson's growing up years in Des Moines, a city I have come to know and like. But mostly it is a clever exploration of the changing values of our culture and a kind of lament for the lazy midwestern days of yore.

I also loved The Short History of Nearly Everything because I love getting to the bottom of things and that is what Bryson is about. At Home continues in that vein. It starts when Bryson goes up to the attic in his cool old British house that used to be a clergyman's home in a Victorian era parsonage. In that attic he stumbles upon various artifacts that provide insight not only to the family that once lived in that manse, but also into the culture that surrounded and informed them. So, Bryson decides to go for a room by room tour of his old house and discover the history lurking behind each. A visit to the kitchen, for example, is an excuse to explore the history of cooking and nutrition. A visit to the bathroom becomes an exploration into the evolution of hygiene.

His historical focus here is on the 19th century and Victorian England and this reader is grateful. There is a beautiful paragraph at the end of the book discussing the astonishing developments of that period and this terrific little book is a pleasant enumeration of those developments and the people who were largely responsible.

The book starts its journey outside the house and looks at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the building of The Crystal Palace. It is the perfect place to begin because it emphasizes the feeling of Plenty that is beginning to arise for the first time in history. There just seemed to plenty of everything, at least for the people who were keeping track. The Crystal Palace even had flushing toilets, something unheard of up till that time.

We then move into the house and begin a discussion of the Hall. We learn that the first large structures after Rome left the British Isles were large one room buildings called Halls. These one room Halls resulted in a fairly egalitarian society where servants slept right next to masters as they huddled around the central fire. But then architects figured out how to channel the smoke from the fire through a chimney and thus second floors could be added. This not only created privacy for the first time, but it also accentuated class distinctions between the servants, who now stayed downstairs, and masters who got to hang out in the still pretty sooty upstairs chambers.

All of the chapters similarly trace the evolution of various aspects of culture.

If you, like me, love to discover obscure little facts that compel you to laugh, shake your head, and underline the passage in question, you will love this book.

I like the idea, for instance, that ice was America's biggest crop in 1844.

Or that cans were around for 100 years before someone in 1925 invented the can opener.

I didn't know that Thomas Jefferson was the first person clever enough to cut a potato lengthwise in order to make french fries. Of course, the validity of that assertion is hard to prove.

Amazing that 1.5 million people died of starvation in Ireland's Potato Famine of 1845, yet Ireland was exporting plenty of eggs, cereal, meat, and seafood. No one had to die! No wonder James Joyce had problems with his native land.

In the quest to find the perfect lighting solution Drummond discovered you could get an enormously bright light by burning chunks of lime. These lights were used as spotlights in the theater, thus the term "being in the limelight."

That, by the way, is why there were so many theater fires in Victorian times.

Joseph Swann was the first creator of the light bulb. In fact, he illuminated his entire house with electric lights before Edison even managed an effective demonstration. However, Edison was much better at publicity and marketing. Edison thought big. Swann hung out at home.

The term "middle class" is coined in 1745 and by the time the Victorian era is in full swing the emerging middle class creates the modern world as we know it.

Tea is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in 1660. This is the first mention of tea in England.

Edison was a lot like the crazy inventor in Back to the Future ( I can't remember his name.). He invented hundreds of hare brained ideas that failed, but got VERY lucky a few times.

When Jefferson died he was $100,000 in debt. In today's money that makes Newt Gingrich look like a penny pincher.

In the 15th and 16th centuries the average marriage lasted just 10 years before one or the other partner died.

I suppose I should already know this, but the main impetus for the onset of the Industrial Revolution was the effort to find cheap ways to make cotton.

Interesting that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded 60 years before a similar society was created for children!

This book is a gold mine of cool information. I would encourage you to pick it up. Just think how it will enliven dinner conversations.