Bill Bryson

"From the bestselling author of A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body"--

A Guide for Occupants

The Body

Miyamoto Musashi

“You shouldn’t ever try to kill yourself by cutting your wrists, by the way,” he says. “All of those things going in are wrapped in a protective band called a fascial sheath, which makes it really hard to get to the arteries. Most people who cut their wrists fail to kill themselves, which is no doubt a good thing.” He is briefly thoughtful. “It’s also really hard to kill yourself by jumping from a height,” he adds. “The legs become a kind of crumple zone. You can make a real mess of yourself, but you are very likely to survive. Killing yourself is actually difficult. We are designed not to die.”

Sad fact that despite this whole progress in all fields, we can still increase the chances to harm ourselves.

Remarkably, even with all the improvements in care, you are 70 percent more likely to die from heart disease today than you were in 1900.

As with so much else, you experience the world that your brain allows you to experience.

An interesting thing about touch is that the brain doesn’t just tell you how something feels, but how it ought to feel. That’s why the caress of a lover feels wonderful, but the same touch by a stranger would feel creepy or horrible. It’s also why it is so hard to tickle yourself.

Brandon Liew

Patrick Book

Every Bill Bryson is like a quaint waterfall of minor revelations, just constantly washing over you. He's a treat.

'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.' 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 facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up. A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. 'What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson

Apurva Chitnis

This was a fun read, full of trivia about different aspects of the human body.

My main takeaways are:
* We still don’t understand how much of the body works.
* Given this, modern medicine is truly a marvel. Most of what we know was discovered in the last 100 years, and it’s still being actively researched today.
* Doctors and research in times gone by have done more to save lives than perhaps any modern politician. Sadly, we remember very few of their names or achievements today.

Joy Bush

Pretty good, especially the later chapters.

Sarah Schumacher

3.5 stars. Good overview of both the body and history of the doctors and scientists that did the research. First Bryson book I’ve read; not a big fan of the writing style and I prefer to read books that dive deeply into specific areas of study. Personal preference. Read this if you’d like a fascinating overview with history.

Lord Aragorn

A wonderful exploration of the human body. Fascinating how much we know and yet don't know about the way the body works. Loved the anecdotes about how various medical discoveries were made. Some descriptions of historical medical procedures sounded pretty barbarous. A reminder of how the process of gaining knowledge can be painful and requires sacrifice. 

This might be one of those books I end up reading multiple times.

Simao Freitas

Amazing book. It’s detailed enough to be informative and lightweight enough to be a super pleasant reading.

I'm still amazed by this book and i did enjoy reading it. It was a lovely journey with the author to explore how strange and fascinating our body is. 100% gonna read it again.

Andy Sporring

Interesting overview of the body and its parts. Even an estimate of what all the "parts" would cost if you build a body from scratch

Ahmed Salem

Jk Jensen

In typical Bill Brysonry, the author has jam-packed The Body full of well-researched information in an approachable format. The sections on viruses and the immune system were especially meaningful given the current COVID-19 pandemic.

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER _______ 'A directory of wonders.' – The Guardian 'Jaw-dropping.' – The Times 'Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson...an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book.' – The Sunday Times 'It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' – The Daily Telegraph _______ ‘We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.’ Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up. A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. ‘What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.’ Bill Bryson

Colin Das

One of my favorite books I read in 2020 and a  landmark book  in terms of my thinking about medicine and the human body. 

This book is equal parts: medical history and fun biological facts. It nicely demystifies some things, yet also makes clear which mysteries are still open. Its chapters are each part of the body: brain, guts, hands, etc. 

Bill Bryson writes well and he has a style of making  high-magnitude analogies  , eg, "Every hour your heart dispenses around 70 gallons of blood. That’s 1,680 gallons in a day—more gallons pushed through you in a day than you are likely to put in your car in a year." and using  contrasting thinking  (bundling pro's and con's), eg, "Your brain does all these things for you because it is designed to help you in every way it can. Yet paradoxically it is also strikingly unreliable.". 

I like his weird sarcasm: [Viruses] "like bacteria, ... are incredibly successful". The penicillin story was good: "Every bit of penicillin made since that day is descended from that single random cantaloupe." But the story of antibiotics is weird and concerning. They are like grenades (killing everything, both good and bad). We've stopped developing them because it's gotten too expensive -- and some bacteria have outpaced our antibiotics. This line was also sad "Almost three-quarters of the forty million antibiotic prescriptions written each year in the United States are for conditions that cannot be cured with antibiotics."

Overall, strong recommendation.

Kyle S

This book will make you marvel at the amazing things your body does to keep you alive and also extremely grateful that you've survived as long as you have. 5/5

A bit long and repetitive at times, but still a wonderful guide through the complex machine that is our body. Something i learned after finishing the book, which i suspected before starting - we understand so much about our body but we know frighteningly little about it. I respect a book that uses the words, "we simply don't know why this happens", and yet manages to teach the reader so much more nevertheless. 

Hamed Khalidi

Rachel ✨

Liv Strefford

So many interesting facts jam-packed into this book, really enjoyed it, just got a bit bored towards the end

Josh Clement

Didn’t love this like I’ve loved other Bryson stuff. Every sentence felt like it was a fact, which get a bit tiring to read after a while.

Charmaine

A must read to understand yourself and the history of life.

Flavia Louise

This was really interesting and informative though for me it could have gone even more in depths and also it could have been more intersectional.

Nadine 

What a prescient book on the body with its several references to viruses, epidemics, the flu etc. It's a bit of a tour-de-force about the body summarising pretty much everything I've read recently on any aspects of the body or medical matters / histories / personalities.
There are also several nice nods to people who were for one reason or another not acknowledged for their contributions to the body of knowledge. 
A nice light but comprehensive read.

Natalie Stenson

Audiobook. I enjoyed this so much. Packed with fascinating information and some very entertaining anecdotes. I’m now constantly annoying everyone with ‘Did you know...’

Omar Fernandez

Listened to just over half of the book (56%) and while somewhat entertaining it just feels like an interesting textbook with tons of facts. This book isn't entertaining enough, nor is teaching me things that change how I lead my life, to compel me to keep listening. 

In the spirit of "if you're not loving a book, quit and move on" I'm dropping this one.

Lukas Gräf

Probably my favorite book since “why we sleep”, so many great insights into the human body. What’s so remarkable and exciting is that a lot of things are still unknown but Bill Bryson manages to put a lot of interesting and new facts into this book. 
Nevertheless I had so many questions still after reading certain chapters that I would want to read up on several topics more in depth. So if any of you out there can recommend further books that act as a follow up, please do recommend :)

Анастасия Розова

The book was very interesting! I have honestly learned more than maybe I've learned in school back in the day. So many great facts, surprising and not. Also it's astonishing how much science knows and doesn't know at the same time!

The narrator was also very nice and at the 1.9x speed the audiobook was excellent.

I would recommend this book to people who are excited about their bodies, people's lives and just learning.

The Body A Guide for Occupants

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