With wit and beautiful prose Bryson reveals how whatever happens in the world ends up in our homes. Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything, discusses and signs his new book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life. While taking the reader on a tour of his own home, a Victorian parsonage in rural England, he writes “a history of the world without leaving home.”

The bathroom provides a history of hygiene; the bedroom—sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen—nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. With wit and beautiful prose Bryson reveals how whatever happens in the world ends up in our homes, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Recorded Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at the Harold Washington Library Center.