This is another fascinating piece of journalism from Bryson—witty, engaging, and thoroughly informative. I finished it with a newfound appreciation for all the wonders and oddities of the human body!

Bill Bryson uses his intelligent wit to make an academic subject come to life. The book is non-fiction and all about the human body, but Bryson inserts interesting stories and facts that make the subject enjoyable and engaging. Just the right mix of facts, anecdotes and interesting tales to keep the prose moving. This book teaches the reader a lot about the human body, without feeling like a textbook.

I am so grateful to Doubleday books for the eARC of Bill Bryson’s The Body. This book embodies all of my favorite kinds of science writing - it takes a topic we are all familiar with, our bodies, and then lets the reader see their own body in a new way. I am constantly on the lookout for books to share with my anatomy students, and this has catapulted to the top of my stack! It is wonderfully thorough, but Bryson’s wit & writing style make it easy to digest.

I LOVE this book! It is so fascinating! I am sure that I will reread this. There is so much valuable information in this book.

A book about the body given the Bill Bryson treatment. A book that may read like a science textbook from other authors transforms into an almost travelogue through the human body. I have read almost everything Bryson has put out but am still amazed how his mind works. If there was ever an interest in the human body and quest for more knowledge than you could ever remember, pick this book up.
Thank you Netgalley, Bill Bryson, Doubleday Books, Doubleday for the ARC for my honest opinion.

Bill Bryson's books take material that is very complex and difficult to comprehend and turns it into something enjoyoyably readable. Science is fascinating yet a brain can only comprehend so much, particularly sitting in a high school Human Biology class. Enter Bill Bryson who familiarizes himself incredibly well then explains it in terms the reader can understand. It's not easy reading but the joy of reading his writing style and the pictures he creates in my mind make it much easier and fun to read. His prose is intelligent without being academic. It is understandable without being condescending. His humor is infused throughout.

The Body by Bill Bryson is a massive undertaking. He has written about how the human body works system by system. But, that’s not all. There is information about the research that has been done, treatments that have been tried, therapies that have been used, and experiments - both good and bad.

This book was definitely ambitious and Mr Bryson has pulled it off brilliantly. The Body is full of interesting facts and information that anyone who has a body should find fascinating. His sense of humor and the way he presents his material is stellar. Of course, the information Mr Bryson presents is available from many other sources, but it’s the way he frames his information that makes The Body so interesting and unique. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for review.

My goodness, this book was fascinating. I'm not super into the science or medicine or the human body, but I was so intrigued with this book that I had a hard time putting it down.

Bryson goes through all the major systems of our body and gives the most incredible facts. I found myself talking about this book with my kids as I drove them to school in the morning.

For a subject that could easily fall in the dry category, Bryson delivers the information in a way that kept me turning the pages!

I was excited to see Bryson had come out with a new book, so I was anxious to dive in and read this one. I have to say I found this one a bit lacking in Bryson's usual humorous insights, it was a lot more factual than I was anticipating and for that reason it took me a bit of time to read. There's no doubt he did a lot of research and found an entertaining way to convey some interesting facts about the human body, but I do Mary Roach's books a lot more entertaining, but all and all a good book.

The Body is quite a different sort of exploratory journey for Bryson, but he brings to the book his trademark wit and humanity. I really enjoyed this one!

My review appeared on Booktube for Nonfiction November: https://youtu.be/vX_ZVCxF-XA

Overall, I felt that this was far too big of a topic for one book. I don't know that any author could have pulled this off!

How much do you know about the ways in which your body works?

Most people have at least a rudimentary understanding of some of the basics, but it’s a scant few that possess a truly thorough knowledge about the ins and outs of their assorted systems and the organs that make those systems go.

Don’t worry, though – Bill Bryson is here to help.

Bryson’s newest book is “The Body: A Guide for Occupants.” It’s a thoughtful and thorough trip through the human body, an amiable amble from top to bottom and from the outside in. It’s a well-researched and witty exploration of the immense complexities of the human form.

As an author, Bryson has produced a wide body of work, but two of his favorite things are:

Talking about travel; and
Telling you stuff you might not know
Rarely have those two favorites aligned so elegantly than in “The Body.” Because that’s the thing; yes, he has put together a simply extraordinary amount of research – reading texts, interview experts, the whole nine yards – to give “The Body” its, well … body, but in many ways, this book is as much a travelogue as his beloved “Notes from a Small Island” – a fantastic voyage, if you will.

Right from the top, Bryson makes clear what kind of book we’re dealing with. In the first chapter (“How to Build a Human”), he gets right down to it, walking the reader through the long list of materials that go into making up the human body. There’s a lot of fundamental stuff – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon – but there are also a surprising number of trace elements that are very much part of all of us … even if science isn’t necessarily sure why that is.

That uncertainty is a semi-constant presence throughout the book. One of the joys of “The Body” is Bryson’s almost gleeful excitement in making sure that we know how much we don’t know. And not just “we” the readers – “we” includes the many experts whose lives have been devoted to studying the body and how it works. Despite having lived in bodies for the entirety of human existence, there’s still a lot we don’t understand about how they work.

Whether he’s explaining the multitude of microbes contained within each of us (“Microbial You”) or the wide array of chemical reactions that make us work (“The Chemistry Department”), Bryson is constantly pushing forward, exploring each aspect of the body with thoroughness and an unceasing wit. Want to know what the deal is with why we sleep? Find out that we basically have no idea in Chapter 16 (“Sleep”). Always wanted to know more about what the deal is with us walking on two feet? “On the Move: Bipedalism and Exercise.” He even ventures into far less rosy territory toward the end – the paired “When Things Go Wrong: Diseases” and “When Things Go Very Wrong: Cancer” – although even in the bleaker sections, the trademark Bryson humor is still there, easing the sting even as the darker side of the body is explored.

And it isn’t just the nuts-and-bolts scientific facts that we’re getting; there’s a whole lot of history as well. All of it contributes to the sheer readability that is a hallmark of Bryson’s always-engaging work.

Taking all of this information and distilling it down into something readable is an impressive accomplishment. To do that while also creating something engaging and entertaining is exponentially more so. And really, that’s the unique gift that Bill Bryson to the table; he finds the sweet spot in the center of the educating/entertaining Venn diagram as well as any nonfiction writer out there. No one writes about the travel experience quite like he does; it just happens to make zero difference whether the journey on which he’s guiding us is an internal one or an external one.

“The Body” is a fantastic example of creative nonfiction, a clever and wonderfully informative trip through the human body led by a guide who’s smart enough to share what he knows and acknowledge what he doesn’t. You’ll learn things you never expected about the ways in which your body works and the reasons behind those workings – except when Bryson (and all the experts he encounters along the way) simply shrug their shoulders. Ultimately, while it’s fun to know why things work, it’s not always necessary. Sometimes, they just do – and that’s enough.

As always, Mr. Bryson delivers a read that intrigues. Looking at the human body and finding ways to give the reader scientific information that they can understand, AND writing it in a way that is readable....Thank you! I appreciate that!

Another solid entry in the Bill Bryson canon. I don't think it was quite as funny as many of his other books, though it did have its moments. (I almost wonder if he was trying not to be too funny, since the body does lend itself to many inappropriate laughs, particularly in the reproductive and digestive bits.) As in A Short History of Nearly Everything, there is an abundance of interesting information, but ironically I felt like this book was less comprehensive than Everything was. Still, this was fun, informative, and a must-read for anyone with a body. Ha.

Another great one by Bill Bryson. Educational, funny, puzzling and charming. Plus, much more interesting that the old Grays Anatomy. Would recommend to book groups and non-fiction readers.

Definitely interesting! Love Bryson's humor even in rather dry subjects. I did feel that a lot of it was just reporting though. Would have liked z More Humor sprinkled in.

An extremely detailed book about anatomy, with some of the trademark ease with which Bill Bryson delivers a gazillion facts to readers. I did wish for a bit more of the "ease" or side notes, to take some of the scientific stuff down a notch - I'm sure any scientist would be horrified by everything I just wrote :-) I'm just someone who needs a bit more context of personal experience to pad too much fact-giving (like Mary Roach, for example). This book didn't quite work for me - I found myself skimming through some of the duller elements of the human body, wishing for some side notes about a person, or a case, or something much more Oliver Sacks. I think, on the whole, I wanted this book to be by Oliver Sacks, and written like he writes, in a more anecdotal fashion. Alas. It will still be endlessly fascinating to those inclined towards science and biology, I'm sure!

This was a fantastic read. Most of the material is likely available in an anatomy text book. However, this book is an accessible introduction to the complexities of the human body for everyone. The language is awesome. Bryson definitively knows how to capture the reader's attention.

It was a fascinating read. I could not put the book down. The only downside is that the book lacks details in many places. However, it is expected in an overall summary of a complex system like the human body.
"It was great as long as it lasted!"

I REALLY liked this book. I am biased because in my imagination Bill Bryson is a friend with whom I chat often and from whom I learn all sorts of fascinating things. In reality, Mr Bryson is an author whom I’ve never met but who entertained me for the last two and a half months with facts about the human body that I have repeated aloud so often to friends and family that every time they find my words interesting they ask me if I learned it from “your Body Book”. Most of the time the answer was yes. I learned so many things in each and every chapter. Perhaps the most important to me was that a person cannot “undo sitting” or negate its detrimental effects on the body by activity or exercise. As a result of this singular fact, I read many of these 400 pages while standing. True fact.
This is one of those books that at the end I am better off, mind and body, as it happens, for having read!

If only Bill Bryson would have written all of my textbooks. The Body took me a little while to read, but it’s long and I kept returning to re-read nuggets I wanted to remember. Everything Bill writes is thorough and full of facts you wished you could memorize for daily conversation and dinner parties. Another win for Bill Bryson as I work my way through his catalogue.