The Body

Through anecdotes about scientific history and startling facts that seem too extraordinary to be true—the DNA in one person, if stretched out, would measure billions of miles and reach beyond Pluto—Bryson draws the reader into his subject. ... 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

Remarkable ... Every page is dense with scientific facts written as vividly as a thriller, as well as answers to conundrums such as why we don’t fall out of bed when we are asleep ... It is woven through with the kind of human stories that Bryson has made his trademark.

Mail on Sunday

Readable and useful ... witty, jargon-free prose that glides you through 400 pages. It’s fun to read because it’s not just comprehensive, but quirky.

Richard Morrison, The Times

A directory of wonders. Extraordinary stories about the heart, lungs, genitals ... plus some anger and life advice – all delivered in the inimitable Bryson style

Gavin Francis, Guardian

‘Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson… richly interesting… an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book. If it sells hundreds of thousands of copies, like the last one, it will be no bad thing.’

The Sunday Times

It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book..where Byrson really shines is in his imaginative glosses on the facts he has collected.

The Daily Telegraph

Bryson rummages about in our vital organs, emerging with a parade of fascinating facts.

Daily Mirror

[Bill] takes us with him, wondering at the complex functions of the tongue, seeing him stick a finger in the aorta…The book’s a bestseller.

Gillian Reynolds, The Sunday Times

There is not an organ Bryson describes that is not illuminated by a fun fact or unlikely anecdote.

TIMES 2

Bryson tackles the body in an amusing, fact-filled guide

The Sunday Times (Ireland)

Written with his trademark wit and insight

RTE Guide

As ever, the bestselling writer takes a familiar subject and delivers one revelation after another

The Irish Mail on Sunday

A comforting compendium of fascinating facts

Irish Independent

The brook bristles with data…but the star turns are Bryson's wry forays into the histories of neuroscience, genetics, anatomy and immunology.

Nature

Stuffed with enthralling, often mystifying facts.

Christina Hardyment, The Times

A joy to read ... every paragraph contains at least one startling, even awe-inspiring fact ... Infused with an infectious sense of wonder at the miraculousness of it all.

Reader's Digest

One of the strengths of Bryson’s delightful new book... is that it reveals the thousands of rarely acknowledged tasks our body takes care of as we go about our day

A.J. Jacobs, The New York Times

The extraordinary story of what we are made of and how we work ... This revelatory book reads as captivatingly as a thriller.

Teresa Levonian Cole, Country Life

SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019: 'so packed with arresting facts (you eat 60 tons of food in a lifetime) and unlikely anecdotes (such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel's six weeks with a half-sovereign lodged in his throat) that you barely notice the sheer volume of anatomical knowledge you're digesting ... makes complex subjects simple and eminently entertaining.'

Sunday Times

BOOKS OF THE YEAR - 'You'll never look in the mirror the same way again'

Daily Mirror