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The estimated reading time for At Home is several hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of At Home?

The author of At Home is Bill Bryson.

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At Home Book Summary - At Home Book explained in key points

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At Home summary

Name: At Home
Rating: 3.9 (150 reviews)
Author: Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

A Short History of Private Life

3.9 (150 ratings)

14 mins

Brief summary

'At Home' by Bill Bryson offers a fascinating insight into the history of daily life at home. From the invention of bed to the evolutionary quirks hiding in modern kitchens, Bryson examines the objects we take for granted revealing how they changed the way we live.

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Culture General Knowledge

Table of Contents

At Home
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Break down the walls of history and learn about the home.

Did you ever wonder why your house is built of wood and brick? Why you insist on adding salt and pepper to everything you eat? Or how exactly those canned green beans in the pantry came to be?

If such questions keep you up at night, these blinks will be soothing bedtime reading.

We say home is where the heart is; but really, home is where the history lives. These blinks walk you through a “typical” house to discover the curiosities that each room reveals.

In these blinks, you’ll also learn

why French soldiers had to shoot canned food to eat;
why ladies avoided board games for their “sexually stimulating” effects; and
why medieval monks were more than a little funky.

Soldiers once needed to shoot cans open to get at the food inside; in general, food safety was lax.

Nearly every modern Western kitchen has a cupboard stacked high with a colorful array of cans, filled with foods from olives to peaches to peas.

Yet people didn’t always have such easy access to healthy, non-perishable foods. How to preserve food to last through a winter, say, was once a big challenge for families.

In the late eighteenth century, a Frenchman named Francois Appert proposed storing food in glass jars.

Appert’s idea was a huge breakthrough at the time simply because the alternatives were poor. Unfortunately, however, the glass jars didn’t seal well, meaning that air and bacteria could contaminate the food.

In the early nineteenth century, an Englishman named Bryan Donkin came up with the sealed metal can. He made his cans from wrought iron, however, which was exceedingly heavy and difficult to open.

Just how difficult? Well, some cans came with instructions on how to break them open with a hammer and chisel. Soldiers issued canned food as rations would have to shoot the can or stab it with a bayonet to get at the food inside!

Later cans were produced from lighter materials but were still difficult to open; that is, until 1925 when the can opener was invented.

So while inventors were working on more efficient ways to preserve and consume food from a can, a hungry public was plagued by another problem: food adulteration. In the food industry in the seventeenth century, this was common practice; and as there was little official oversight, no consumer could be completely sure what exactly he or she was eating.

Sugar was commonly “cut” with gypsum, sand or even dust. Tea was often a mix of tea leaves, dust or dirt. Vinegar was “complemented” by sulphuric acid; chalk was a common additive in milk.

Today, luckily, governments enforce food standards, and for the most part, we know what we’re putting in our mouths!

The lack of limestone and timber in America led British colonists to use stone as a building material.

Have you ever wondered how common materials such as wood or brick became the building blocks of our homes? This terrific story touches on both colonial British and early American history.

Let’s start with wood, which owes its use as a building material to the British colonies in North America. When newly-arrived settlers began establishing homesteads, they faced a problem – namely, a lack of limestone. Back in Britain, they would have built their homes from a combination of mud and sticks, held together with lime. But lime was not available in North America and without it, the settlers’ early houses were shoddy and fragile. Houses fell down so often that it was rare to find one that had stood for more than ten years.

The whimsies of fashion affect building materials, too, and London’s bricks had a fluctuating existence.

We’ve learned that building materials, like wood and stone, were used to build homes based on availability and affordability. Yet fashion also played a part in determining a builder’s preference.

When expensive stone wasn’t an option, many English families opted to use brick to build their homes. This was often the case in areas where limestone was in short supply, like in London. What London did have was quantities of iron-rich clay that builders could bake into bricks at a building site, eliminating transportation costs entirely.

A nineteenth-century bed was often stuffed with straw and home to rodents and bugs.

Your biggest complaint about your mattress is probably that it’s either too firm or too soft. Regardless of your preference, you probably would have loathed your mattress in the nineteenth century.

Beds of this era were often stuffed with all manner of things, both dead and alive!

Ancient Romans loved taking baths, but medieval thinkers thought dirt brought you closer to God.

A bath can either be a cozy, soothing retreat from the stresses of life or a time-consuming, albeit necessary, hygienic measure. Yet taking a bath today is nothing like it was in ancient Rome.

Many Romans delighted in spending time in grand bathing halls, a practice that was a lifestyle choice for socializing and not just a necessary habit to keep clean.

We eat salt to survive; we consume pepper because it’s popular, or so said the ancient Romans.

If you glance at a dining table anywhere in the Western world, you’ll see shakers of salt and pepper. But have you ever wondered why this combo became such a permanent table fixture?

Well salt is essential to human biology. For thousands of years, humans have gone to great lengths – from the creative to the violent– to secure salt. This makes sense when you know that, without salt, you’ll die.

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What is At Home about?

At Home (2010) offers an in-depth look at the history of the home. These blinks walk you through stories that each “take place” in a different room in a house, explaining the history of spaces such as a bathroom or kitchen. Interestingly, you’ll explore how each space evolved into the rooms we live in today.

At Home Review

At Home (2010) takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of our homes, uncovering surprising stories and insights. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Packed with intriguing facts and anecdotes, it sheds light on the everyday objects we often take for granted, transforming our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.
Exploring various aspects of home life, from architecture to food, the book offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking look at how our domestic lives have evolved over time.
With his witty and insightful narrative, Bill Bryson keeps the reader engaged and entertained throughout, making even the most mundane details of home life come alive.

Best quote from At Home

…the woods that greeted the newcomers were not quite as boundless as they first appeared…

—Bill Bryson

Who should read At Home?

Students of sociology, anthropology and history
People with an interest in the history of domestic life

About the Author

Bill Bryson is an author of many bestselling books, on topics ranging from science to language and travel. He previously worked as a journalist and chief copy editor at British newspapers The Times and The Independent. His other titles include Notes from a Small Island (1995) and A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003).

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History Society & Culture

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