I'd put [a:Bill Bryson|7|Bill Bryson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1578597522p2/7.jpg]'s [b:A Short History of Nearly Everything|21|A Short History of Nearly Everything|Bill Bryson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433086293l/21.SY75.jpg|2305997] at the top of the list for nonfiction books I've read in my life, a list which, I admit, is short. This latest, [b:The Body: A Guide for Occupants|43582376|The Body A Guide for Occupants|Bill Bryson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1565810646l/43582376.SX50.jpg|67805986], which came out in 2019, would be maybe third or fourth on that list. It's a great book I'd strongly recommend and the only reason I'm not giving it five stars is because of a few minor things that would bother only me, I think.
 Bryson's greatest gift is in explaining complicated things clearly yet without making you feel you're being talked down to. (It's a skill I'd love to have but lack; when I try to do that people think I'm talking to them like they're in kindergarten.) The Body can be read as sheer entertainment and passed on to a friend, but it's also worth keeping and using as a reference. It has thorough notes on sources and a comprehensive index. Bryson's other gift is his writing. It's somehow a perfect mix of literary and journalism but I wouldn't call it literary journalism, a genre best seen in the writing of [a:John McPhee|40|John McPhee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1235861988p2/40.jpg], [a:Joan Didion|238|Joan Didion|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1335450818p2/238.jpg] and [a:Truman Capote|431149|Truman Capote|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1419249359p2/431149.jpg]. It's its own thing. As in A Short History, Bryson tells the stories of many of the people who have advanced our knowledge of the human body and medicine, people you've probably never heard of even though they've probably made your life or the life of someone close to you much better or even possible. He does this in short passages but they're fascinating.
 OK, my stupid quibbles are these, stupidest first: 1. He calls Down syndrome "Down's syndrome." Wrong, wrong, wrong. A professional writer of his level should know better. 2. He mentions just briefly that the belief that an enormous amount of your body head escapes from the head "seems" not to be true. It's a silly myth that has an interesting history that anyone can find with seconds of research. I'd have loved to hear his take on it. 3. He calls tuberculosis the most deadly infectious disease there is today, which is true but AIDS gets no mention and malaria just one sentence.
Like I said, stupid and personal.
I'm writing this in the middle of March of 2020 and even though The Body was published in 2019 what he says about diseases is current and insightful:

 A successful virus is one that doesn't kill too well and can circulate widely. That's what makes the flu such a perennial threat. A typical flue renders its victims infectious for about a day before they get symptoms and for about a week after they recover, which turns every victim into a vector. The great Spanish flue of 1918 racked up a global death toll of tens of millions—some estimates put it as high as a hundred million—not by being especially lethal but by being persistent and highly transmissible. It killed only about 2.5 percent of victims, it is thought. Ebola would be more effective—and in the long run more dangerous—if it mutated a milder version that didn't strike such panic into communities and made it easier for victims to mingle with unsuspecting others.
 That is, of course, no grounds for complacency. Ebola was only formally identified in the 1970s, and until recently all its outbreaks were isolated and short-lived, but in 2013 it spread to three countries—Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone—where it infected twenty-eight thousand people and killed eleven thousand. That's a big outbreak. On several occasions, thanks to air travel, it escaped to other countries, though fortunately in each instance it was contained. We may not always be so lucky. Hypervigilance makes it less likely diseases will spread, but it's no guarantee that they won't.
 It's remarkable that bad things don't happen more often. According to one estimate reported by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, the number of viruses in birds and mammals that have the potential to leap the species barrier and infect us may be as high as 800,000. That is a lot of potential danger.