The Fascinating Human Body

A Book Review of The Body by Bill Bryson

This book is seemingly everywhere and quite popular, so I figured I’d give it a try. The beginning of the book was my favourite part, and it went exactly as I expected. What is the body made out of? How does it work?

From the skin and hair to your hands and hips, it explores the human body, both from a scientific and historical perspective. This part was delightful to read, and I found that each section was well put together and with relevant information. Although I wish it was a bit longer and covered more body parts.

Later chapters touch on breathing, food, sleep, reproduction, and pain. I was somewhat annoyed at this because while it’s most definitely about the body, it nevertheless felt like a deviation to me. Maybe it’s just the way I interpreted its marketing with its title and cover, but I was expecting more anatomy, and I was somewhat let down by this. But the chapters were still interesting and useful, so I didn’t ruin the book for me.

The last part of the book was about when things go wrong: diseases. When the body starts to fall apart, either by outside pathogens or your own doing. Focusing heavily on both infectious diseases and cancer. I liked this section a lot and learned tons of new things. The very last chapter explores the role of medicine. How much progress we have made and how many lives it has saved, but also its darker side, on how in some aspects we haven’t made any progress in over 100 years, and also touches on some of the negative influences of the pharmaceutical industry.

I liked the historical aspect of it, how things were discovered and how knowledge progressed over time. While it wasn’t an epiphany, it really nailed the point of how so many scientists did such incredible work, and yet didn’t have any recognition in their lifetime. And some have no recognition ever.

Perhaps the thing I disliked the most was that the book heavily borrows content from The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman. It always credits Lieberman, but it felt a bit lazy and have it read it already; the overlap between the two was very unsatisfying. Especially since I felt Lieberman did a much better job.

Overall it was a solid read, being both useful and entertaining. If you’d like to learn about the human body, this is a good choice. If you’d like some overlap but more from an evolutionary standpoint and in addition to some nutrition, then check out Lieberman’s book as well.

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Tiago V.F.