The Body (Bryson) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Delightful…. Reveals the thousands of rarely acknowledged tasks our body takes care of as we go about our day.… Informative, entertaining and often gross (kissing, according to one study, transfers up to one billion bacteria from one mouth to another, along with 0.2 micrograms of food bits)…. Bryson, who gives off a Cronkite-like trustworthy vibe, is good at allaying fears and busting myths.
New York Times Book Review


Glorious…. Having described the physical nature of our world and beyond… [Bryson] now turns inward to explain—in his lucid, amusing style—what we’re made of.… Astonishing…. [He] draws on dozens of experts and a couple hundred books to carry the reader from outside to inside… and from miraculous operational efficiencies to malignant mayhem when things go awry.… You will marvel at the brilliance and vast weirdness of your design.
Washington Post


A witty, informative immersion…. The Body—a delightful, anecdote-propelled read—proves one of his most ambitious yet, as he leads us on a head-to-toe tour of a physique that’s terra incognita to many of us…. Playful, lucid… [Bryson] cover[s] a remarkably large swathe of human corporeal and cerebral experience.
Boston Globe


A directory of wonders…. Extraordinary…. A tour of the minuscule; it aims to do for the human body what his A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science.… The prose motors gleefully along, a finely tuned engine running on jokes, factoids and biographical interludes…. Wry, companionable, avuncular and always lucid… [The Body] could stand as an ultimate prescription for life.
Guardian (UK)


Mr. Bryson’s latest book is a Baedeker of the human body, a fact-studded survey of our physiques, inside and out. Many authors have produced such guides in recent years, and some of them are very good. But none have done it quite so well as Mr. Bryson, who writes better, is more amusing and has greater mastery of his material than anyone else.
Wall Street Journal


Bryson launches himself into the wilderness of the human anatomy armed with his characteristic thoroughness and wit. He ably dissects the knowns and unknowns of how we live and die and all the idiosyncrasies of our shared infrastructure.… This book is full of such arresting factoids and, like a douser hunting water, Bryson is adept at finding the bizarre and the arcane in his subject matter.… Amazing.
USA Today


(Starred review) Bryson’s tone is both informative and inviting, encouraging the reader, throughout this exemplary work, to share the sense of wonder he expresses at how the body is constituted and what it is capable of.
Publishers Weekly


[Bryson] keeps the science lively by interweaving facts and statistics with anecdotes, interviews with scientists and doctors, and his trademark dry humor.… Bryson has shaped an enormous amount of anatomy and physiology into an informative and entertaining biostory.  —Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ
Library Journal


(Starred review) A delightful tour guide…. Bryson's stroll through human anatomy, physiology, evolution, and illness (diabetes, cancer, infections) is instructive, accessible, and entertaining.
Booklist


A narrative by Bryson rarely involves the unfolding of a grand thesis; instead, it's a congeries of anecdotes, skillfully strung, always a pleasure to read but seldom earthshakingly significant. So it is here.… A pleasing, entertaining sojourn into the realm of what makes us tick.
Kirkus Reviews