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The Body: A Guide for Occupants

Bill Bryson

4.31 · Rating details · 36,336 ratings · 4,760 reviews

In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary fa ...more

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Hardcover, 450 pages

Published October 15th 2019 by Doubleday Books

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Mar 03, 2020 Emily May rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, 2020

I went into this book with the attitude of "of course, Bill Bryson can make anything interesting", but I was still a little unsure if this was the right book for me. There are definitely interesting aspects of the body, but I'm more of a "fun fact here, quirky tidbit there" kinda person. I wasn't sure I wanted to read a whole book full of words I can't pronounce. But, no, Bill Bryson really can make anything interesting.

His usual charismatic, undemanding style is all over this book. He begins wi I went into this book with the attitude of "of course, Bill Bryson can make anything interesting", but I was still a little unsure if this was the right book for me. There are definitely interesting aspects of the body, but I'm more of a "fun fact here, quirky tidbit there" kinda person. I wasn't sure I wanted to read a whole book full of words I can't pronounce. But, no, Bill Bryson really can make anything interesting.

His usual charismatic, undemanding style is all over this book. He begins with the head and takes us all the way through the physiology of the human body. The organs, systems, various proteins and bacterium that I will never remember the name of. What really makes this interesting is that he links each part of the body in with the history of medicine and diseases relating to that part. He pulls out little anecdotes that shocked me, infuriated me, and often made me laugh.

Bryson knows he isn't writing a book for medical professionals here. There's a certain amount of depth in some chapters, but it feels like a lot is probably skimmed over so us laymen can wrap our heads around the information. And, frankly, it wouldn't be nearly as readable if that wasn't the case.

My one big takeaway from The Body is that we know almost nothing about the body. We know so much more than we did a hundred years ago, and yet we still know almost nothing. I swear that about ten times in every chapter, there's a comment like "these cells do this, but nobody knows why" or "women are 10x more likely to get this disease than men, but why is anybody's guess". I mean, we spend a third of our lives asleep and no one even knows why we do that.

I like how Bryson looks at health and disease across the world and not just in the United States and Europe. Though the U.S. comes out of this looking even worse than I would have anticipated. Despite spending more on healthcare per person than any other country, U.S. citizens die younger and have higher rates of chronic disease, depression, drug abuse, homicide, and HIV than almost all (if not all) developed nations. There are a number of theories why, though no one knows for sure.

If you like Bryson's previous books, you should like this one. It's pop science, and more fun than it is ground-breaking, but as long as you're not planning to use it as your handbook for experimental surgery, then I see nothing wrong with that.

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Oct 06, 2019 Theresa Alan rated it it was amazing

I learned so much from this book. One of the things I learned was that continuing to learn and keeping my brain active will help me avoid dementia, so you should read this book, too. I highlighted many, many pages, so I’ll just offer a few highlights here.

The most interesting thing was reading about our skin, the tiny tiny layer that we makes us white or black or brown. Bryson watched a surgeon incise and peel back a sliver of skin a millimeter thick from the arm of cadaver. It was so thin it w I learned so much from this book. One of the things I learned was that continuing to learn and keeping my brain active will help me avoid dementia, so you should read this book, too. I highlighted many, many pages, so I’ll just offer a few highlights here.

The most interesting thing was reading about our skin, the tiny tiny layer that we makes us white or black or brown. Bryson watched a surgeon incise and peel back a sliver of skin a millimeter thick from the arm of cadaver. It was so thin it was translucent. That’s what race is. Which is why it’s so ridiculous that such a small facet of our composition should be given so much importance when it’s merely a reaction to sunlight. “Biologically, there is no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples.”

Skin gets its color from a variety of pigments, the best known is a molecule we know as melanin. It’s also responsible for the color of birds’ feathers and gives fish the texture and luminescence of the their scales. Our skin evolved based on our geography.

A lot of myths I grew up with are not true. Like the fact we only use ten percent of our brain--false. I was taught as a kid that different parts of the tongue were attuned to different tastes like salty, sweet, sour. Nope. Also, like the movie the Matrix, apparently when I eat a brownie straight from the oven, it doesn’t actually taste good, my brain just reads these scentless, flavorless molecules and makes me think they’re pleasurable.

In one of the studies he talks about, a man was given an injection of a harmless liquid to mimic snot. It couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, but under those blue lights detectives use. The test subject went into a room with other folks, and when they turned the overhead lights off and the blue lights on, every single person, doorknob, and bowl of nuts had the pretend snot on it, which is how the common cold passes from person to person so easily—through touch, apparently not by making out with someone (although presumably at some point you might touch that person).

Antibiotics
• Almost 3/4ths of prescriptions written each year are for conditions that can’t be cured with antibiotics (like bronchitis)
• 80 percent of antibiotics are fed to farm animals to fatten them up which meat eaters then consume, which is one of the reasons antibiotics aren’t as effective as they used to be.
• Fruit growers use antibiotics to combat bacterial infections in their crops, sometimes even of produce marked “organic.” Which means we humans are unwittingly eating antibiotics, rendering them ineffective when we need them for a real disease/infection.

There’s a lot more interesting stuff in here. Thanks so much to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, which RELEASES OCTOBER 15, 2019. ...more

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Jan 10, 2020 Emily (Books with Emily Fox) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019-releases, audiobooks

This was actually really good!

Highly recommend it if the topic interested you, the audiobook was also great!

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Nov 11, 2019 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those with no fear of their own mortality

Shelves: audio, library, gr_awards_2019, non-fiction, 2019

The definition of a “well” person?
Someone who hasn’t been examined yet
(loosely quoted from the book)

This book is two things:
- Really interesting trivia about the human body
- Terrifying

I love trivia, and this book had tons of it. This was not a deeply scientific analysis of the human body. It is just snippets and brief anecdotes from various regions of the body as Bryson takes you on a journey through our innerspace. If you are not into big fancy words and meandering analysis, then you need not w ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 0-biology, bryson-bill

To know that one does not know how not just even a tiny part of the body works is the first step to getting interested in exploring each fascinating, inner landscape.

From up to down, inside to outside, young to old, organ to nerve and so on goes the journey trough our miraculous wonder of nature whose amazing eyes are just sending this information to the brain of the reader.

Many myths about the body are shown and design flaws described, but after billion years of evolution, that´s no wonder. We ...more

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Mar 22, 2020 Dr Appu Sasidharan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: medical-fiction-and-nonfiction

(Throwback review) If you are in quarantine due to Covid-19 and if you want to read just one book, this is the one you should pick. Chapter 20 (When things go wrong) in this book is a must-read one as it is perfectly explaining the current scenario we are facing. This book will help us know more about our body, which might enable us to appreciate its uniqueness even when challenged it is to the extreme by a virus.

I read this book amid all the pandemonium I had to face as a Doctor and, more impor ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Jenna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, non-fiction, medical

How to make a human body:

Blend together the right amount of each of 59 elements, at a cost of US$151,578.46 according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

~Or~

If you don't have that kind of money lying about, you can also do it the old-fashioned way that involves heterosexual sex. I'm not here to judge your methods; make a human whichever way you please. What I am here to do is tell you that Bill Bryson has done it again! He has written yet another brilliant and vastly interesting book, thi ...more

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Oct 30, 2019 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: medicine, history, science

I like Bryson, his books are often amusing and informative. He has a good eye for details that will keep the reader engaged or outraged or just smile. This is a tour of the human body, but it includes stories and asides about people associated with the discovery of various diseases or a cure or a system in the body. Some books on this topic can get a bit carried away with long names for parts that involve endless Latin or Greek. A nice thing he does here when he does give these is to say what th I like Bryson, his books are often amusing and informative. He has a good eye for details that will keep the reader engaged or outraged or just smile. This is a tour of the human body, but it includes stories and asides about people associated with the discovery of various diseases or a cure or a system in the body. Some books on this topic can get a bit carried away with long names for parts that involve endless Latin or Greek. A nice thing he does here when he does give these is to say what the words mean in English, often interesting enough in itself, and to say why the person naming it that might have thought that was a good idea.

I didn't realise that the X-chromosome was called that because the person who discovered it didn’t know what it did – and so, like ‘planet X’, the letter was chosen due to this mystery rather than for the chromosome’s shape. And the Y-chromosome was likewise named following on from X in the alphabet.

You come away from this thinking that a lot of people are basically bastards. I won’t spoil the stories, but the person who took credit for Streptomycin fits this category particularly nicely.

This is a quick read and an interesting one. Particularly good is the last chapter – you know, we are all going to die sooner or later and so death often sharpens our interest. I’ve become fascinated by the idea that no one is allowed to die of ‘old age’ any more. You have to have died of something, but as Bryson says, getting old generally involves multiple things going wrong with you – and so picking one generally ignores the significant contribution one or other of the things you were suffering from inevitably played in your demise. Perhaps saying ‘he died of old age’ as the cause of death would be in fact be more accurate. Some of the things people were allowed to die of in the past seem so much better than heart disease or cancer - like ennui, for example. "I think he died mostly of listlessness..." As I said recently to a friend of Facebook – the category of deaths I would choose for myself would be ‘peacefully and in his sleep’.
...more

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Jun 19, 2020 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

Shelves: nfr-2020

I read this off and on for over a week, I think reading it straight through would not have left me time to ponder the information and possibly would have been a case of too much at one time. Our bodies, many systems and other developments of which I knew little all in one book. I actually own a copy because this is another that I feel deserves more than read. Or at least to have as a reference.

There is a huge amount of research that went into this book. Bryson is good and picking out informatio ...more

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Jul 17, 2019 Betsy rated it really liked it

Shelves: netgalley

Be a bar trivia champion!
Want to dominate any biology questions at bar trivia?

The Body: A Guide for Occupants has you covered! For those of us who haven't had a biology class since we fulfilled some course requirement ages ago, Bryson gives an excellent overview of what doctors and scientists know about all our different body parts and bodily functions.

This book does for biology what books like Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong or A People's History ...more

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Apr 20, 2020 Carole rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson is a well-researched user’s manual for anyone interested in how our bodies function. And, of course, we also have the opportunity to enjoy the Bryson wit. This is a field trip through the human body and I was astounded at the level of research needed to write such a book. And I admit there was so much I did not know about the body and how it is built to repair itself. This is an informative guide as well as a source of humour, now and again. Read it ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 carol. marked it as don-t-count

Shelves: not-for-me

Well, if the dude can't get the difference between a feeding tube and a breathing tube coming out of someone's nose, I'm not sure how accurate his guide is going to be. Add in problems explaining kidney failure, gram staining and smallpox vaccines, and I think this is a solid 'miss.'

Most telling phrase from the review: "Recommended 'Not for the science, which can be found in a more detailed and accurate form elsewhere, but for the view, a sweep of landscape with endless little tragicomedies pla ...more

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Aug 25, 2019 Brandon Forsyth rated it it was amazing

I either laughed, shook my head in wonder, or did both on every page. This is Bryson at his best, and it should be handed out at birth.

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Nov 23, 2019 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Until now, I only knew Bill Bryson for his snarky travelogues. My buddy-reader, however, informed me that his non-fiction book was very good indeed. Besides, many biology books suffer from the fact that their authors are great scientists but horrible writers. So I wanted to read something that had the potential to be entertaining as well as educational.

The book is divided into these chapters:

And yes, we did get a little bit of humour, but that wasn't because Bryson made fun of certain things, bu Until now, I only knew Bill Bryson for his snarky travelogues. My buddy-reader, however, informed me that his non-fiction book was very good indeed. Besides, many biology books suffer from the fact that their authors are great scientists but horrible writers. So I wanted to read something that had the potential to be entertaining as well as educational.

The book is divided into these chapters:

And yes, we did get a little bit of humour, but that wasn't because Bryson made fun of certain things, but was very good at pointing out the hilarity of history and us silly homo sapiens.

Bryson decided to explain anatomy to the reader as well as giving historical and practical context.
We thus hear of the abominable Typhoid Mary, a women who, at one point, found out she was one of the rare carriers of typhoid without showing any symptoms, but decided to still work in kitchens (against a promise she had made to the authorities) and didn't even bother to wash her hands before preparing meals, thus spreading the disease until she was finally put under house arrest.
Or Nicholas Alkemade, who served in WW2 and jumped out of his plane (his parachute had burnt to cinders and he preferred not to burn to death), survived falling 5500 metres into a pile of snow (after having been slowed down by some pine trees) and suffering only a sprained leg. After the war had ended, he worked in a chemical plant where, while removing chlorine gas-generating liquid from a sump, he received a severe electric shock from the equipment he was using. His gas mask became dislodged and he began breathing in the poisonous gas. After 15 minutes, his appeals for aid were finally answered and he was dragged to safety, nearly asphyxiated by the fumes. Not long after, a siphoning pipe burst, spraying Alkemade’s face and arms with industrial sulphuric acid. With astounding presence of mind, he dived head-first into a nearby drum of limewash, thereby neutralising the acid and escaping with only 1st-degree-burns. He returned to work, but was pinned beneath an almost 3m long steel door runner that fell from its mountings as he passed by, escaping - somehow - with only minor bruising. However, after this, even he came to his senses and decided to no longer tempt fate. He thus became a furniture salesman, dying peacefully in June 1987.

Just two examples of how remarkable and resilient the human body can be (though Mary, in my opinion, was mostly an example of being sick of mind). There are others, of course, such as people being trapped in frozen lakes or extremely cold weather, who are afterwards successfully (slowly) warmed up and who survived (babies even).

The book is full of other fascinating facts as well. Many of us know, for example, that damages to our frontal lobes result in personality changes, which was the reason lobotomy became popular at one point in human history (Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomized because her father considered her too willful, something Bryson mentions in this book, too).
Did you also know that it's 400 times more likely that a teenager is in an accident if said teenager is accompanied by another teenager?! And this isn't just limited to car accidents.
Or did you know that we always say "our 5 senses" but that there are many more? Like the sense that tells us if we're lying down or standing upright even when our eyes are closed? It's called proprioception (our sense of where we are in relation to the space around us).
Or did you know how many things we still cannot explain? One such thing are emotional responses like crying when sad - it has no physiological benefit AND is the same response as for joy so why are we doing it?

Science, it's history, trials and errors but also impressive feats from hundreds of years ago, groundbreaking discoveries (the most well-known example being penicillin), modern appliances and procedures but also problems that will become more dangerous in the near future ... I was delighted how Bryson presented it all comprehensibly and explained it in a way every layman can understand, often giving examples from every-day occurrences, always showing just how much he is fascinated by the subject(s) himself.

A wonderful look at an important and thrilling subject (us) by a seriously talented author - just don't be prissy about digestion or our insides. ;P ...more

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Feb 25, 2020 Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it

Shelves: nutrition, biology, humor

Bryson is a wonderful travel guide, and this time around he takes us through an enjoyable tour of the human body. The book is surprisingly detailed, for a popular-science book. Bryson exhibits his usual knack for the extraordinary and unusual, but despite veering close to it at times, he avoids the pitfall of making this book just a tour of the oddities of the human body.

Bryson takes just enough such detours to keep us amused, but just like a good tour guide ensures that we are adequately educa ...more

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Nov 25, 2019 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019-shelf, non-fiction

For all of you other cyborgs and pure artificial intelligences out there, I should mention that this is a rather interesting primer on regular meat-sacks. It even has the distinction of not being science fiction at all.

But as the title suggests, outright occupancy usually comes with a rental charge. The bill always comes due.

I've read a few Brysons before... and my favorite has got to be A Short History of Nearly Everything. This one, from a regular knowledge-gathering stand, comes in as a tight ...more

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Nov 17, 2019 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A truly amazing compendium on the human body aka "a warm wobble of flesh!" Truly engaging and enlightening. Occasionally I wanted to fast forward to avoid the details, but mainly I was truly engaged, appalled or enthralled!

My personal favorite of Bill Bryson's anecdotal stories:
The emergency appendectomy on a US submarine during WWII. The ship's pharmacist assistant was ordered to operate without any knowledge or equipment, as he as was the senior medical personnel on board. This is a little min ...more

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Dec 22, 2019 Paul rated it liked it

Shelves: medicine

3.5 stars
I am joining a book club; unusual for me because I am not a hugely social animal. It is based at the university where I work for one day a week and it meets a lunch time, once every two months. This is the book for January; it’s not something I would have read in normal circumstances.
Bryson employs his usual wry and laconic style and applies it to the human body. This isn’t a medical text book, but it is detailed and covers pretty much what you would expect. Bryson does cover the histo ...more

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Apr 28, 2020 Diane Barnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: bedtime-books

Exercise regularly.
Eat sensibly.
Die anyway.

This anonymous quote is the heading of the last chapter of this book, "The End". I have to admit I would have been bored if I'd tried to read this straight through but tackling a few pages every night at bedtime turned out to be fascinating and educating. There is a lot of trivia about not just the body itself and how it works, but also about scientists and doctors and their discoveries, sometimes accidental, the sometimes wrong conclusions they came to ...more

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Nov 30, 2019 Rebecca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: medical, read-via-edelweiss, science-tech, best-of-2019, history, reviewed-for-blog, requested-from-publisher, wellcome-prize-2020-hopeful, 2019-second-half-most-antic

Shelve this next to Being Mortal by Atul Gawande in a collection of books that everyone should read – even if you’re a squeamish hypochondriac or you don’t normally choose nonfiction. Bryson is back on form with his latest, indulging his layman’s curiosity about how the body works. Now, I read a LOT of medical memoirs and popular science. I’ve read entire books about organ transplantation, sleep, dementia, the blood, the heart, evolutionary defects, surgery and so on, but in many cases these go Shelve this next to Being Mortal by Atul Gawande in a collection of books that everyone should read – even if you’re a squeamish hypochondriac or you don’t normally choose nonfiction. Bryson is back on form with his latest, indulging his layman’s curiosity about how the body works. Now, I read a LOT of medical memoirs and popular science. I’ve read entire books about organ transplantation, sleep, dementia, the blood, the heart, evolutionary defects, surgery and so on, but in many cases these go into more detail than I really need and I can find my interest waning. That never happens here. Without ever being superficial or patronizing his readers, the author gives a comprehensive introduction to every organ and body system, moving briskly between engaging anecdotes from medical history and encapsulated research on everything from gut microbes to cancer treatment.

Bryson delights in our physical oddities, and his sense of wonder is infectious. How fantastic that there is such a thing as the Belly Button Biodiversity Project (run by North Carolina State University) that has discovered 1,458 species in bacteria new to science in people’s navels! How astounding that a man hiccupped for 67 years straight! As you’ve likely gathered from his other work, he loves a good statistic, and while this book is full of numbers and percentages, they are accessible rather than obfuscating, and will make you shake your head in amazement.

“A study in Switzerland found that flu virus can survive on a banknote for two and a half weeks if it is accompanied by a microdot of snot.”

“If you’ve ever wondered why no one wants to kiss you first thing in the morning, it is possibly because your exhalations may contain up to 150 different chemical compounds” including “methyl mercaptan (which smells like very old cabbage), hydrogen sulphide (like rotten eggs), dimethyl sulphide (slimy seaweed)”, etc.

“Even with the advantage of clothing, shelter and boundless ingenuity, humans can manage to live on only about 12 per cent of Earth’s land area”

“Altogether there are about seven thousand rare diseases – so many that about one person in seventeen in the developed world has one, which isn’t very rare at all. But, sadly, so long as a disease affects only a small number of people it is unlikely to get much research attention. For 90 per cent of rare diseases there are no effective treatments at all.”

This is a congenial and persistently cheerful book, even when discussing illness, scientists whose work was overlooked, and the inevitability of death. What I found most sobering was the observation that, having conquered many diseases and extended our life expectancy, we are now overwhelmingly killed by our lifestyle, mostly a poor diet of processed and sugary foods and a lack of exercise – “we are born with the bodies of hunter–gatherers but pass our lives as couch potatoes.”

A few specific things I learned:

I’ve had a nasty cold for the past two weeks, and this book saved me from making a wasted purchase – I had just put Vitamin C on the shopping list when I read that taking large doses of Vitamin C is ineffectual. That it can cure a cold is an urban myth. Immediately, I crossed it off the list and ate an orange instead.

It takes 72 hours for food to move through a woman’s digestive system and be excreted. I’d always assumed that what I was getting rid of was my last meal – so that if I had a bout of diarrhea I could blame it on what I’d just eaten. I’m now curious to know how it works for flatulence: I’m sure that I get instant flatulence after eating chickpeas, lentils, eggs or cheese. But is that just my imagination? Maybe I’m actually observing the effects of a meal from a few days ago.

A neat thing to know about cold weather; it makes total sense, but had never occurred to me. “Incidentally, the reason your nose runs in chilly weather is the same reason your bathroom windows run with water in chilly weather. In the case of your nose, warm air from your lungs meets cold air coming into the nostrils and condenses, resulting in a drip.”

Favorite passages:

“Your body is a universe of mystery. A very large part of what happens on and within it happens for reasons that we don’t know – very often, no doubt, because there are no reasons. Evolution is an accidental process, after all.”

“Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding.” ...more

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Jan 07, 2020 Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: highly-recommended-favorites, medicine-and-disease, history-of-science

This book was given to me as a Christmas present, and it was a great gift. As a fan of Bryson, I was surprised that I had not even heard of his new work of popular science. I am glad that it came to my attention, then, since this was my favorite Bryson book since A Short History of Nearly Everything. Structured as a tour of the human body, the book made me feel right at home.

No matter what the subject, Bryson’s style is consistent: snappy prose, engaging anecdotes, and fun facts, all tied toget This book was given to me as a Christmas present, and it was a great gift. As a fan of Bryson, I was surprised that I had not even heard of his new work of popular science. I am glad that it came to my attention, then, since this was my favorite Bryson book since A Short History of Nearly Everything. Structured as a tour of the human body, the book made me feel right at home.

No matter what the subject, Bryson’s style is consistent: snappy prose, engaging anecdotes, and fun facts, all tied together with a lot of curiosity and humor. At its worst, this can make for some superficial books—a meandering array of factoids with little structure—which in my experience plagues his history writing. But science seems to bring out the best in Bryson. Here, the writing is disciplined and controlled. He clearly did a great deal of research and organized his facts with care. And Bryson has a rare talent for research. You would think that, in our media-saturated age, most of the great stories and characters from history would be known. But somehow Bryson is always able to uncover an unsung hero with an eccentric personality. The history of science seems particularly rich in this.

Bryson not only unearths unsung heroes, but surprising information. Bryson is a fun fact factory. Arguably, fun facts are the very definition of superficial knowledge; but Bryson’s curiosities are irresistible. There were so many things about the body—about digestion, sleep cycles, anatomy, disease—that I did not know, and so many things that surprised me. For example, I learned that our eyes do not only have rods and cones, but photoreceptive ganglion cells; these do not contribute to vision in any way, but tell us when it is light or dark. This is why some blind people instinctually know if it is day or night, or even if the light is on or off.

Bryson’s style is also well-suited to popular science. His jokes, comments, and asides can be distracting in other contexts; but when reporting potentially dry scientific information, the humor helps. And it must be said that Bryson’s two biggest preoccupations—things we do not know, and things that can kill us (or ideally both)—have ample material in a book about the human body. Indeed, this book gave me a bit of death anxiety, since Bryson dwells on all of the things that can go seriously wrong and how little we know about the why. The scariest thing, for me, was the section on antibiotics. The rate at which bacteria adapt to antibiotics is far outpacing the rate at which we are discovering new medicines. (And our flagrant overuse of antibiotics is certainly not helping.) If we do not somehow reverse this trend, we can have a real crisis in the near future.

If the book has any takeaway, it is that lifestyle is important. Exercises is tremendously beneficial; and inactivity is likewise lethal. A good diet makes a big difference, too, as does avoiding obviously harmful activities like smoking and excessive drinking. Our bad habits in the United States are partially why we lag behind other developed nations in life expectancy. As Bryson also points out, our health system is not particularly good, either, despite the enormous costs involved (several times the prices in other countries). Indeed, the American health system is not only lagging behind other countries, but is actively creating problems. The most obvious example of this is the opioid epidemic, which is largely caused by overprescribing pain medication. And the reason that these medications are only overprescribed in America, it seems, is the unsavory relationship between doctors and drug companies.

As you can see, there is a great deal of interest in these pages—from the history of science, to the development of modern medicine, to the science of anatomy and physiology—none of it dense, dull, or otherwise difficult, but rather witty, charming, and altogether fun to read. I recommend it. ...more

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Oct 12, 2019 Karen R rated it it was amazing

Bill Bryson’s trademark humor is evident in this fascinating book that provides detailed descriptions of the body, how things function and history of discovery. A big takeaway is that although there have been great strides in what we know about science and medicine, he makes it clear just how much is still unknown about how and why things work.

This book would be perfect to serve as a primer for a high school health and wellness course. Thanks to Doubleday Books for the ARC in exchange for my ho ...more

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Jan 12, 2020 Candie rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this book; it is very entertaining. There are so many interesting facts about every single part of the body in here. There are just enough stories and humor added in that it makes the book very readable; it never seems like it is too technical or dry, but keep in mind that it is still a book about body facts. It was very fascinating to learn just how much we don't know about the body and how or why it does what it does. I also found that there were quite a few things that I thou ...more

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Mar 21, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, library-loan, medical-and-science

Bill Bryson, as usual, manages to make a difficult and complex topic completely accessible and enjoyable in The Body. Taking the reader on journey from the brain (my favourite chapter), endocrine system down to the lungs and beyond, every chapter is full of interesting facts that will entertain as well as inform.

Bryson just seems to have this ability in his writing to make the reader feel as though they're chatting with a friend about a subject that he's so clearly passionate about. It manages t ...more

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Jun 09, 2020 Emma Donoghue rated it it was amazing

Typical Bryson: erudite, compassionate, hilarious.

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Jun 27, 2020 Woman Reading rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-stars-very-good, nonfiction-2020-challenge, nfbc-botm-and-br, nf-medical-and-science

4 ☆ characterized in turns by droll wit and stomach - churning descriptions

Our bodies are a universe of 37.2 trillion cells operating in more or less perfect concert more or less all of the time. ... The miracle of human life is not that we are endowed with some frailties but we are not swamped by them. ...
You truly are a wonder. But then so, it must be said, is an earthworm.

And with this elegant turn of sentiment, Bryson embarked on a journey of the human body, from top to botto ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 thefourthvine rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction, biology

People who should read this: those who really, really enjoy book reports. People who should absolutely not read this: trans people, people with chronic pain, fat people, anyone with a degree in any aspect of biology, anyone who reads more than one popular science book a year.

The thing is, there are basically three ways you can go with a book like this. There’s the complete and in-depth approach, which is absolutey ruled out here; you can’t cover the human body completely in four years of medica People who should read this: those who really, really enjoy book reports. People who should absolutely not read this: trans people, people with chronic pain, fat people, anyone with a degree in any aspect of biology, anyone who reads more than one popular science book a year.

The thing is, there are basically three ways you can go with a book like this. There’s the complete and in-depth approach, which is absolutey ruled out here; you can’t cover the human body completely in four years of medical school, never mind in a single book. Then there’s the fun facts approach, which Mary Roach has absolutely perfected; you give a brief overview and then you delve into interesting and possibly amusing things your reader probably doesn’t know. That’s where I thought this was going. And then there’s the massively oversimplified, somewhat dull book report, and that’s where this unfortunately ended up. This reads like Bryson read approximately 400 books, summarized each one in a single page, and then added an introduction and a conclusion.

And that’s a problem. The reason each of those books was written was that their topics could not be adequately covered in a page. So every time I happened upon an area about which I already knew some things — or when I’d read the same book Bryson had for that particular bit — I found myself hissing, “But you’re MISSING THE POINT” or “But that’s — that’s so superficial it’s actually inaccurate” or just “Seriously? Seriously??”

I had particular concerns about his discussions of sex and sex chromosomes, which was so simplified and bad that it pretty much went directly to a TERF place. (The problems start with him saying everyone has two sex chromosomes, and that if you have XX you are always female and if you have XY you are always male, and then they sort of go on from there. Biology is more complicated than your fifth-grade-level overview suggests.) He also manages a neatly internally contradictory discussion of the Death Fat that spans over multiple chapters. (Especially enjoyed him explaining in one chapter some of the reasons humans are fatter today than previously, only to explain in another chapter that we all just eat too much and don’t exercise enough. Also there’s a good bit where he explains that fat is definitely killing everyone early, only to point out a bit later that some of the fattest populations on the planet are also the longest-lived. And so on.) There’s also a fun spot where he describes Alexis St. Martin, who was an intensively mistreated victim of constant unethical experimentation by a physician, as “not the most cooperative of subjects.” There’s a lot of stuff like that, that Bryson lightly glosses over and really, really should not.

When the book’s not enraging, it’s just dull. Bryson mostly elides his own narrative voice, which is his main strength as a writer, in favor of pretending to be an authority, so we get an endless dull recitation of facts that many readers already know. (And many of which we learned from more engaging books than this one.)

This book left me sad and frustrated and took me so long to slog through it messed up my holds at the library. A solid loser, all the way around. ...more

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Jul 07, 2020 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, biology, humor, medicine, nonfiction, science

What a marvelous book! Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. His dry wit shines in all of his books. Before reading this book, it was hard for me to imagine what the book would be like. I've read some of Bryson's travel books--all delightful--but I couldn't image what a book about the body would be like. As it turns out, it is a tour book, written in the same style, as a metaphorical tour of the body.

Bryson interleaves talking about a lot of facts with interesting and often humorous anecdot ...more

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Jul 21, 2019 Snooty1 rated it it was amazing

Even for someone with a science/ medical background this was PHENOMENAL!
What an absolutely interesting and eye opening adventure into our bodies; and told in such a entertaining way!!!
Recommend for ANYONE and EVERYONE

Thanks to netgalley and Doubleday books for providing me with a copy of this book for my honest review.

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Oct 24, 2019 Sonja Arlow rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-books, medicine, 2019-read, non-fiction, recommended

3.5 stars

This is like A Short History of Nearly Everything but for the body.

Had I not read so many medical books and watched endless hours of QI I would have given this a MUCH higher rating but because of this prior knowledge some sections felt like deja vu.

The scope of the book is impressive, Bill does not leave any stone (or rather muscle, cell, bacteria or organ) unexplored.

I also learned enough fascinating trivia which I plan to spring on unsuspecting friends at inappropriate times for my o ...more

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About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

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William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK.

In The Lost Continent, Bil ...more

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Well, here we all are, sheltering in place, buying canned beans, and generally trying to figure out how to stay inside and keep our minds busy....

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“The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.” — 30 likes

“Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns through more information in thirty seconds than the Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years. A morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size—about the size of a grain of sand—could hold two thousand terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of this book.” — 21 likes

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