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The Body (2019)

A Guide for Occupants

by Bill Bryson

Paperback | Ebook | Audiobook

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One-Sentence Summary

The Body is a fantastically-written and awe-inspiring 23-chapter tour through the 30 trillion cells that (literally) make you who you are - by best-selling author, Bill Bryson. (450 pages)

Contents

1. One-Sentence Summary

2. The Body Review

3. The Body Summary

4. The Body Contents

5. Best The Body Quotes

6. Read More: 5 Books Like The Body

7. Wish There Was a Faster/Easier Way?

Note: This The Body summary is part of an ongoing project to summarise the Best Health Books and Best Self Help Books of all time.

Note: This The Body summary is a stub. I'll write a full summary later. For now, you'll find enough meta-data here to help you decide if it's worth reading the book.

The Body Review

The Body is a wonderfully written, awe-inspiring book.

And I mean that literally. It will genuinely inspire the kind of awe in you, for every part of you, that your body deserves, and yet rarely receive.

Is it practical? Not really.

Will it change your life? Probably not.

But if you’re looking for a great audiobook, or something to refill you with the kind of wonder for everyday life that usually only belongs to young children, then The Body is a great book to read.

The Body Summary

This publisher’s blurb comes from the Penguin hard cover edition of The Body…

“Bill Bryson takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body—with a new afterword for this edition.

Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion 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 anecdotes, 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 will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information. As addictive as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner’s manual for every body.”

NOTE: This is basically an engagingly written, unillustrated biology textbook (and not the kind of book that gets summarised). Result: I won’t be coming back for it anytime soon. Check out the publisher’s blurb and the contents sections below to get a feel for the scope of the book.

The Body Contents

The Body has 23 main chapters…

How to Build a Human
The Outside: Skin and Hair
Microbial You
The Brain
The Head
Down the Hatch: The Mouth and Throat
The Heart and Blood
The Chemistry Department
In the Dissecting Room: The Skeleton
On the Move: Bipedalism and Exercise
Equilibrium
The Immune System
Deep Breath: The Lungs and Breathing
Food, Glorious Food
The Guts
Sleep
Into the Nether Regions
In the Beginning: Conception and Birth
Nerves and Pain
When Things Go Wrong: Diseases
When Things Go Very Wrong: Cancer
Medicine Good and Bad
The End

Best The Body Quotes

These The Body quotes come from The Art of Living's ever-growing central library of thoughts, anecdotes, notes, and inspirational quotes.

"The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns through more information in thirty seconds than the Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years. A morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size—about the size of a grain of sand—could hold two thousand terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of this book."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"There are thousands of things that can kill us—slightly more than eight thousand, according to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems compiled by the World Health Organization—and we escape every one of them but one. For most of us, that’s not a bad deal."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"The only thing special about the elements that make you is that they make you. That is the miracle of life."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"For each visual input, it takes a tiny but perceptible amount of time—about two hundred milliseconds, one-fifth of a second — for the information to travel along the optic nerves and into the brain to be processed and interpreted. One-fifth of a second is not a trivial span of time when a rapid response is required—to step back from an oncoming car, say, or to avoid a blow to the head. To help us deal better with this fractional lag, the brain does a truly extraordinary thing: it continuously forecasts what the world will be like a fifth of a second from now, and that is what it gives us as the present. That means that we never see the world as it is at this very instant, but rather as it will be a fraction of a moment in the future. We spend our whole lives, in other words, living in a world that doesn’t quite exist yet."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"People act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is a reaction to sunlight. Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples. And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the color of their skin."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"All that is really going in your mouth is texture and chemicals. It is your brain that reads these scentless, flavorless molecules and vivifies them for your pleasure. Your brownie is sheet music. It is your brain that makes it a symphony."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"Make no mistake. This is a planet of microbes. We are here at their pleasure. They don’t need us at all. We’d be dead in a day without them."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"In breathing, as in everything in life, the numbers are staggering – indeed fantastical. Every time you breathe, you exhale some 25 sextillion (that’s 2.5 × 1022) molecules of oxygen – so many that with a day’s breathing you will in all likelihood inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every person who has ever lived.1 And every person who lives from now until the sun burns out will from time to time breathe in a bit of you. At the atomic level, we are in a sense eternal."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

"An interesting thing about touch is that the brain doesn’t just tell you how something feels, but how it ought to feel. That’s why the caress of a lover feels wonderful, but the same touch by a stranger would feel creepy or horrible. It’s also why it is so hard to tickle yourself."

- Bill Bryson, The Body

Read More: 5 Books Like The Body

Enjoyed this The Body summary? You might enjoy the rest of the books on these lists of the Best Health Books and Best Self Help Books of all time.

And in the meantime...

Here are 5 top books like The Body...

1. Being Mortal - Atul Gawande (FREE Summary)

Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal is an uncomfortable yet enlightening exploration of how treating terminal disease (especially linked to ageing) as a purely extend-life-at-all-costs medical problem is destroying the final moments of our lives - by surgeon and best selling author, Atul Gawande.

Published 2014 // 282 pages // Rated 4.4 over 155,700 reviews on Goodreads

2. Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker (FREE Summary)

Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Why We Sleep is a fascinating and accessible guide to what sleep is, why sleep matters and how to optimise your sleep habits to live longer, feel happier and set your life up for success - by sleep scientist and best-selling author, Matthew Walker.

Published 2017 // 368 pages // Rated 4.4 over 125,800 reviews on Goodreads

3. How Not to Die - Michael Greger (FREE Summary)

Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

How Not to Die is a deeply researched and compelling primer on the promise and importance of whole food plant-based nutrition in preventing and reversing disease - by medical doctor and nutrition expert, Michael Greger.

Published 2015 // 576 pages // Rated 4.4 over 31,000 reviews on Goodreads

4. Born to Run - Christopher McDougall (FREE Summary)

A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Born to Run takes takes running back to its roots in this critically acclaimed analysis of evolution, injury and recovery that is filled with compelling insights, great story telling and practical tips - by best-selling author and journalist, Christopher McDougall.

Published 2009 // 287 pages // Rated 4.3 over 186,300 reviews on Goodreads

5. The Obesity Code - Jason Fung (FREE Summary)

Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

The Obesity Code gives an amazing look at how the body uses food to create the perfect conditions for obesity and how to disrupt the cycle to create a healthier future - by kidney disease specialist, best-selling author and MD, Jason Fung.

Published 2016 // 328 pages // Rated 4.4 over 24,200 reviews on Goodreads

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Arthur Worsley
I founded TAoL to discover and share the best wisdom on how to live long and prosper. Before that I studied Psychology, Philosophy & Physiology at Oxford and consulted at McKinsey. Still curious? Learn more or take my FREE productivity quiz.

BLOG > Book Summaries > Health & Vitality

The Body Summary – Bill Bryson

One-Sentence Summary

The Body Review

The Body Summary

The Body Contents

Best The Body Quotes

Read More: 5 Books Like The Body

Wish There Was a Faster/Easier Way?