The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson - a Review

This is the second book of Bill Bryson I have read, and like the first one, A Short History of Nearly Everything that I had read  more than a decade ago, The Body: A Guide to Occupants is a well researched and thoughtful book that has good information of human body presented in humor mixed and eloquent format that I found to be highly readable like his other book I had read. 

Some of these concepts that the writer presented was not new to me, as I had studied some of these concepts in various biological science courses I had taken in high school, colleges and universities, but unlike the heavy tomes text books that I had to plough through in my student life, as I read Bill Bryson's book I found it more amusing and some of the tidbits about various scientists, accidental discoveries, and treacheries of some scientists not giving due credit of the original discoverers or inventors of their hard work shed light on the dynamics of world of science that mimic the larger outside world in every aspect, from heroic triumphs, losses and betrayals. 

The first chapter of this book provides a humble outlook about the very complexity of human body and the nearly impossibility of ever creating a human body artificially matching all the functionalities of actual human body that nature has perfected over many iterations through countless mutations. Here is a good quote: "You could call together all the brainiest people who are alive now or have ever lived and endow them with the complete sum of human knowledge, and they could not between make a single living cell, never mind a replicant Benedict Cumberbatch."

I find the information presented in this book is valuable to many. While we are going through uncertain time and a deadly pandemic, when many people, some of them even in my family and friend circles have perished from COVID 19, and some of them are still going through the sufferings from COVID some of them lost jobs and many other challenges, I hope the summary version of my review can help someone to understand our own human body that most of us take for granted, and perhaps can provide a guidance. Or, it can inspire someone to pursue the concepts presented in this book to face the challenges that science present to invent or discover something beneficial for the human kind. A lofty goal I know, but it is worth pursuing. 

Stay tuned for the next writing based on my understanding of this book by Bill Bryson.