Summary

Bryson begins The Body: A Guide for Occupants with a discussion of the major elements of the human body and how much they would cost if a person tried to buy them from the store. He relates an anecdote from junior high school in Iowa when his biology teacher told him that all the chemicals that make up the human body can be bought at the hardware store for $5. Bryson decides to investigate this claim. He turns to Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, which calculated how much it would cost to assemble all the elements it would take to build Benedict Cumberbatch, an actor at the Cambridge Science Festival who is an average size human. Leading up to the monetary estimate, Bryson runs through the 59 elements of the body and their costs. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and...