Bill Bryson's 'Body'

Bill Bryson repeats himself in his masterful 2019 book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, and the refrain that he repeats over and over again is something along the lines of "nobody knows."

Why do we sleep? Why do we dream? Why has the human brain shrunk over thousands of years? Why can't humans regenerate damaged heart tissue the way so many lower animals can? Why do men go bald? Why do we itch when someone just mentions the word itch? Why are women born with a lifetime supply of eggs within them and yet lose so many of them as the years pass? And so the unanswered questions pile up as the pages fly by.

And yet for all that science still does not know about the human body, it has learned a great deal, and Bryson packs a lot of it into his book without ever making it read like a medical textbook. In fact, virtually every paragraph contains some fascinating tidbit that a reader will yearn to share with someone else. He tells great stories about medical pioneers, presents statistics whose impact are more jaw-dropping than mind-fogging,  and amazes readers with details about what our bodies do for us while we're busy doing something else.

Like most great explainers, Bryson has a gift for metaphors. He says things like this:

"Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding."

"Each component of the cell responds to signals from other components, all of them bumping and jostling like so many bumper cars, yet somehow all this random motion results in smooth coordinated action, not just across the cell but across the whole body as cells communicate with other cells in different parts of your personal cosmos."

To the tiny mites that live on your scalp, he says, your skin is "like a giant crusty bowl of cornflakes."

This being Bill Bryson, he offers lots of trivia just because it is interesting, whether or not it is actually relevant to his subject matter.  For example, the respected British medical journal The Lancet got its name from the instrument used for bleeding patients, back when bleeding was thought to be a wise medical treatment. Or, the most popular vegetable in the United States is the french fry. Or, one study found 2,368 different species of bacteria in 60 random American belly buttons.

You could host a party at which guests take turns reading random lines from The Body. Add food and drink, and a good time would be had by all.