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A review by clivemeister
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
3.0
Bill Bryson isn't afraid of exploring huge subject fields, and having enjoyed his [b:A Short History of Nearly Everything|21|A Short History of Nearly Everything|Bill Bryson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433086293l/21._SY75_.jpg|2305997] I really wanted to like this book. In the end, I found it to be ok, but not gripping.
The style is familiar: lots of interesting facts, strung together with anecdotes about some of the origins of the facts, the people who discovered them, or a curious incident to do with them. Part of the problem is that although we know an awful lot about the body, there's a vast amount that we don't know. So we get gems like this, about our itches:
Or this, about a cantaloupe with mould on it from which modern penicillin is derived:
All of which is fun to read, interesting as a factoid, of possible use in a future pub quiz, but otherwise doesn't really add anything to the larger picture. I'm not sure what I was after here, but in the end it was all a bit like eating an entire box of sweets: each one was delightful in and of itself, but after a while you craved something a little bit more sophisticated.
The closest Bryson gets to this is perhaps when he talks about the health services in western countries, and takes to task those in particular in the USA (for being very expensive, and not actually very good for most people in comparison) and Britain (for being comparatively not very good at important things like cancer survival rates). The impact of socioeconomic class in particular is alarming:
and
This book was extremely well researched, stuffed full of curious, but didn't deliver anything more than that for me. Three stars.
The style is familiar: lots of interesting facts, strung together with anecdotes about some of the origins of the facts, the people who discovered them, or a curious incident to do with them. Part of the problem is that although we know an awful lot about the body, there's a vast amount that we don't know. So we get gems like this, about our itches:
"Studies of scratching showed that the most prolonged relief comes from scratching the back, but the most pleasurable relief comes from scratching the ankle."
Or this, about a cantaloupe with mould on it from which modern penicillin is derived:
"The name and location of the store where Mary Hunt shopped are now forgotten, and the historic cantaloupe itself was not preserved: after the mould was scraped off, it was cut into pieces and eaten by the staff. But the mould lived on. Every bit of penicillin made since that day is descended from that single random cantaloupe."
All of which is fun to read, interesting as a factoid, of possible use in a future pub quiz, but otherwise doesn't really add anything to the larger picture. I'm not sure what I was after here, but in the end it was all a bit like eating an entire box of sweets: each one was delightful in and of itself, but after a while you craved something a little bit more sophisticated.
The closest Bryson gets to this is perhaps when he talks about the health services in western countries, and takes to task those in particular in the USA (for being very expensive, and not actually very good for most people in comparison) and Britain (for being comparatively not very good at important things like cancer survival rates). The impact of socioeconomic class in particular is alarming:
"Two things can be said with confidence about life expectancy in the world today. One is that it is really helpful to be rich. If you are middle-aged, exceptionally well off and from almost any high-income nation, the chances are excellent that you will live into your late eighties. Someone who is otherwise identical to you but poor – exercises just as much, sleeps as many hours, eats a similarly healthy diet, but just has less money in the bank – can expect to die between ten and fifteen years sooner. ... The second thing that can be said with regard to life expectancy is that it is not a good idea to be an American."
and
"Britain comes thirty-fifth out of 37 wealthy countries for number of CT scanners per person, thirty-first out of 36 for MRI scanners, and thirty-fifth out of 41 for number of hospital beds for size of population. The British Medical Journal reported in early 2019 that cuts to health and social care budgets between 2010 and 2017 led to about 120,000 early deaths in the UK, a pretty shocking finding."
This book was extremely well researched, stuffed full of curious, but didn't deliver anything more than that for me. Three stars.