Kathy's Reviews > At Home: A Short History of Private Life

At Home by Bill Bryson
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140928
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Mar 24, 11

2 of 5 stars
Read from March 21 to 24, 2011

This is pretty fascinating and I generally like Bill Bryson, but the book is heavily concentrated on the fascinating discoveries/inventions/accomplishments of men. Women are only mentioned for the silly things they did as the wives of these men or for writing silly books Bryson describes as "unreadable then and probably unreadable now." Apparently in all his exhaustive research on the history of private life, Bryson found no significant contributions by women.

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message 1: by Matt (new) - rated it 4 stars
Dec 10, 2011 05:20pm

Matt I read this comment when I was about 100-200 pages in and could see your point. However upon further reading he elaborates on many women's opinions and achievements. You might consider that it was also a patriarchal society that didn't give women equal chances - not exactly Bryson's fault.

One example I can think of is the woman who owned and ran a successful factory for 50 years producing a product that soon died after she did.


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