I've read a few Brysons before... and my favorite has got to be A Short History of Nearly Everything. This one, from a regular knowledge-gathering stand, comes in as a tight second. The travelogues are fun and often funny, but Short History is pretty comprehensive and rather more funny. This one, however, was not very funny at all.

This book was given to me as a Christmas present, and it was a great gift. As a fan of Bryson, I was surprised that I had not even heard of his new work of popular science. I am glad that it came to my attention, then, since this was my favorite Bryson book since A Short History of Nearly Everything. Structured as a tour of the human body, the book made me feel right at home. A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real-life outside books: It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' Daily Telegraph There is not an organ Bryson describes that is not illuminated by a fun fact or unlikely anecdote. Times 2The 18th & 19th centuries were very bad....medicine sank into a kind of dark age. You could hardly imagine more misguided and counterproductive practices than those to which physicians became attached in the eighteenth century, and even much of the nineteenth. The appendix, has no certain purpose but kills about 80,000 people around the world every year when it ruptures or grows infected..... Now the best thinking is that the appendix serves as a reservoir for gut bacteria. A lot of myths I grew up with are not true. Like the fact we only use ten percent of our brain--false. I was taught as a kid that different parts of the tongue were attuned to different tastes like salty, sweet, sour. Nope. Also, like the movie the Matrix, apparently when I eat a brownie straight from the oven, it doesn’t actually taste good, my brain just reads these scentless, flavorless molecules and makes me think they’re pleasurable. Stuttering affects 1 per cent of adults and 4 per cent of children. For reasons unknown, 80 per cent of sufferers are male. It is more common among left-handers than right-handers, especially those who have been made to write right-handed. The problem with antibacterial soaps is that they kill good bacteria on your skin as well as bad. The same is true of hand sanitizers

And yes, we did get a little bit of humour, but that wasn't because Bryson made fun of certain things, but was very good at pointing out the hilarity of history and us silly homo sapiens. All the richness of life is created inside your head. What you see is not what is but what your brain tells you it is, and that's not the same thing at all. Almost 3/4ths of prescriptions written each year are for conditions that can’t be cured with antibiotics (like bronchitis).If the book has any takeaway, it is that lifestyle is important. Exercises is tremendously beneficial; and inactivity is likewise lethal. A good diet makes a big difference, too, as does avoiding obviously harmful activities like smoking and excessive drinking. Our bad habits in the United States are partially why we lag behind other developed nations in life expectancy. As Bryson also points out, our health system is not particularly good, either, despite the enormous costs involved (several times the prices in other countries). Indeed, the American health system is not only lagging behind other countries, but is actively creating problems. The most obvious example of this is the opioid epidemic, which is largely caused by overprescribing pain medication. And the reason that these medications are only overprescribed in America, it seems, is the unsavory relationship between doctors and drug companies. Or did you know how many things we still cannot explain? One such thing are emotional responses like crying when sad - it has no physiological benefit AND is the same response as for joy so why are we doing it? As with Bryson's 'A Short History of Almost Everything' I'm amazed by the breadth of research and interviewing he must have done for this book. Add to this his hallmark of being wonderfully readable - and you have a great book. Highly recommended.