The Body
by Bill Bryson · first published 2019
45% recommend45% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Engaging, humorous tour of the human body built from many small science stories on how discoveries were made; suits general readers who want information with plenty of wit.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable com- panion as he guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Brysonesque an- ecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, "We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted." The Body wil
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The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2023 and recommend for 2024” ↗Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond The Body - Bill Bryson The Way of Kings - Sanderson So Good They Can't Ignore You - Cal Newport
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
on “Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?” ↗I really enjoyed The Body (and pretty much all Bill Bryson). He has my preferred blend of information and humor.
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗Maximum City, a nonfiction book about Mumbai. A good companion to a first time visitor. I believe that an update is coming out soon. Project Hail Mary, a book about space for engineering nerds. The Body and At Home. They're books by Bill Bryson. He geeks out about stuff and showers is with fascinating trivia. It's hard to put his books down. The Right Stuff, a book about how they picked the first astronauts…
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗The Body - Bill Bryson Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Rovelli, Carlo Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment - Robert Wright…
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗…highly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow and Why Buddhism is True (listened to both as audio books). I have not read the others, but the 5+ books I read by Bill Bryson have been awesome, putting The Body on my year's list - thanks ;)
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗…(helminths and parasites). Pathogens that have been around for a while like bacteria, virus, helminths, and parasites have evolved to push back against immune systems to varying degrees. Source “The Body” by Bill Bryson
on “Mosquito saliva alone has profound effects on the human immune system (2018)” ↗> Bill Bryon's "The Body" Bill Bryson is not an actual expert on anything but a pop-sci journalist who writes whatever naïve publishers will accept. As a linguist, I was shocked that his book on the history of English (The Mother…
on “Crosswords and chess may help more than socializing in avoiding dementia” ↗Bill Bryson talked about this in The Body; the tl;dr is that, yes, with the right scent, humans are as capable as dogs when it comes to tracking something down. The study he cited had humans on all fours, nose to the ground, searching out chocolate…
on “Mechanisms of scent-tracking in humans” ↗…evidence that he had actually done this so he walked to the X-Ray department (he worked at a hospital) and asked them to get him a chest x-ray. Wild how medicine has progressed. (This story is from The Body by Bill Bryson)
on “Wireless magnetic millirobots that deliver medicine inside the beating heart” ↗