The Body: A Guide for Occupants

A book everyone should read. Loads and loads of interesting facts, presented in a very readable way. Lots of little snippets of interesting facts about many of the real characters in the book. Puts lots of things into perspective.

Incredible book, but not one to be read quickly. Needs a lot of thought….impressive!

I have read many of the Bill Bryson travel books over the years and a couple of the more static ones as well. This, of course, is a sort of travel book - just travelling around the body rather than a country. There are 445 pages, split into 23, named, chapters - each based on a section of the body or a bodily experience/function. It was first published in 2019 with this version being printed in 2020. Immediately, the reader is thrown into Bill Bryson's huge bank of research material where the almost irrelevant sits alongside the absolutely vital. The book was published before the Covid pandemic so it is particularly interesting to read about subjects such as viruses and loss of smell without the inevitable references that would have appeared a couple of years on. As ever, the author takes a logical approach to his subject as he gradually works his way around the body - educating and entertaining as he goes. Bill Bryson is an intelligent man and proficient at being able to read scientific information then put it into terms that a general reader will find interesting (and understand!). He does this in a way that includes the reader, always respecting them and without being patronising. It's many years since I studied Biology at school yet many of the principles I learnt are discussed in this book (and it is a discussion as BB is continually having a conversation with himself) - much of the basic facts have remained the same whilst many of the details have moved on or been disproved. Many contributors are quoted and Bill Bryon has met up with a few of them. Where possible, he always tries to describe the person first, engaging the reader and hoping that if you like someone then you are more likely to trust them. It's clear that many widely believed facts about the body have been proved to be wrong or, at the very least, are widely believed to be wrong by the scientific community (for example, the belief that the appendix has no purpose). During his research it seems to be a common situation that the wrong person is credited with findings. Often an individual is made famous by publishing a breakthrough that someone else found. Whenever he finds this. BB puts the record straight (although I suspect the correct names will not stick in my head for long). Occasionally the science gets too much but he always quickly brings it down again. Fascinating read where I learnt a lot.

This is one of those books I feel so strongly that everyone should read that I keep quoting from it to friends and probably boring everyone to tears about. You really do need to read it for yourself to understand how vital it is for people to grasp how their bodies work, and how although much of what goes wrong is out of our control, a lot, on the other hand, is down to our life style choices (our fondness for sugary and processed foods and general reluctance to exercise). I was also shocked on many occasions in the book - for example the grim cancer survival rates in Britain compared to the rest of the better off nations. I felt quite faint reading a description of how mastectomies used to be performed and about "neglected tropical diseases". If the author were not so well known and respected I would have several times thought the statistics he quoted couldn't possibly be accurate, but as I know that is not the case I just muttered "no" and "wow" and "surely not" as I read. I was amazed about Mitochondrial Eve, and the shocking maternal death rate in the USA and their extremely low life expectancy compared to their colossal health care spending, as well as TB rates in London (rivalling those of Brazil and Nigeria). What an incredibly prescient book too. He mentions the dangers of zoonotic diseases and asks a leading expert what he thought the biggest risk to humans was and he replied "flu". A few months later the Covid pandemic started and Bryson was able to add an afterword shortly before the book went to print, urging world leaders to be better prepared - because of course there will be many more these viral pandemics. The only slightly jarring note in the entertaining, fascinating and important book is the repeated use of "we don't know about X, Y and Z." I got the point early on, we know a great deal, but in the grand scheme of things we are only just beginning to discover our bodies and how they work.

Fascinating and funny - Bryson does it again with a fact filled amusing but easy to understand delve into the human body.

Who could resist a title like that; after all, it’s all about us! And as we might expect from Bryson, it’s an absolutely fascinating & compelling book. Each chapter explores a different organ of the body, ranging across facts & functions, the development of knowledge historically through trial & error, inspiration & guesswork & just plain chance. No matter how complex the subject under discussion it is always written in an accessible way: everything you knew, thought you knew & things you never dreamed of....or would rather not know. At random:: 5 out of 6 smokers won’t get lung cancer; nevertheless smoking is a cause of cancer. Because it retains some oxygenated blood, a decapitated head may retain consciousness for a few seconds. When we are touched the brain doesn’t just tell us what we feel, but what we ought to feel. Depending on who or what is touching us. The only opportunity Heimlich had to use the anti-choking manoeuvre he invented was in very old age. Human beings have a tendency to choke as a result of the inefficient arrangement of the oesophagus & the trachea. Immaculately researched, leavened with Bryson’s trade- mark humour & humanity, this is a positive cornucopia of interest. Cannot recommend highly enough. But not for the squeamish.

Wonderfully written book with lot of facts.

The very good book to read and learn about the body and how it works. Highly recommended ♥️ Good book for the people who loves reading science field books. 📚

This is probably going to be my shortest book review ever! This book is simply a collection of facts, largely fun facts, about different parts of the body — the skin, hair, brain, head, the mouth, and so on. Bryson has achieved two remarkable things: (1) he has created a 400-page encyclopedia of the human body, and (2) he has made this the most fun-to-read encyclopedia ever. Since there is nothing much to review really, here are my top 10 fun facts from the book. (1) The human body is essentially a collection of inert elements — the same as in a pile of dirt. (2) The Royal Society of Chemistry calculated that assembling actor Benedict Cumberbatch from his basic chemical components would cost £96,546.79. (3) Race is merely a sliver of epidermis about a millimeter thick. (4) If flattened out, our lungs would cover a tennis court; our blood vessels, if laid end to end, would wrap around Earth 2.5 times; and our DNA, if stretched out, would extend beyond Pluto. (5) We grow 8 meters of hair in our lifetime. (6) Visual inputs take one-fifth of a second to process, so the brain continuously forecasts what the world will look like a fifth of a second ahead — we spend our entire lives living in a world that doesn't quite exist yet. (7) Volume doubles approximately every 6 decibels, meaning a 96-decibel sound isn't just slightly louder than a 90-decibel sound — it's twice as loud. (8) Although everyone reads and pronounces the last blood group as the letter "O," Landsteiner (who discovered blood types) actually meant it to be zero, since this type showed no clumping reaction. (9) During a single day of breathing, you likely inhale at least one molecule that was once exhaled by every person who has ever lived. (10) While studying specimens, Henking noticed one chromosome that always remained separate from the others. He named it "X" simply because it was mysterious, not because of its shape. Pros: Lots of interesting facts about the human body, comprehensive yet concise Cons: It's just a collection of interesting facts about the human body!

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I think Bill Bryson’s science books should be mandatory reading at schools. They’re so entertainingly written and full of fun facts and historical anecdotes that if I wasn’t already a science nut, Bryson’s books would turn me into one. A Short History of Nearly Everything is easily the best book on Earth, life, and the universe that I’ve ever read, and The Body: A Guide for Occupants does the same for the human body. My favorite quote from the book: “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.” Epic, don't you think? I would gladly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, and I myself am going to be reading it again.