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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)
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.
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