“The body floats downstream. But it is late November, and the Kennebec River is starting to freeze, large chunks of ice swirling and tumbling through the water, collecting in mounds while clear, cold fingers of ice stretch out from either bank, reaching into the current, grabbing hold of all that passes by."

“The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice. I’d been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless."

“That evening I sat down with Lizzie and six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson. These were indispensable."

“London Evening Post, November 21, 2017. A warning about the dangers of open-water swimming has been issued following the death of a young woman at a local nature reserve. Sophie Blake, twenty-one, went missing on the evening of July 7, 2017."

“She examines him again, this immaculate twenty something, his tall form folded into the back seat with the large suitcase he’s kept beside him, opting to fill the trunk with smaller things: his tablet and laptop, backpack, duffel, cooler bag. Miserable yet sincere."

“I’m going to tell you what happened in Las Vegas, and I’m going to tell you everything as best I can, but my best is hampered by the fact this all occurred when I was doing two shows a night, channeling a dead princess, sleeping until lunchtime, popping a bit too much Adderal and Valium (yes both), and periodically - like that princess - purging over a jet-black toilet.”

“This book is nothing like the history textbooks I grew up with. It’s visual, it’s handwritten, it jumps around in time. It’s an attempt at a new way of seeing history - placing movements and events and people from across time in conversation with one another in a way that, I hope, offers some insight into who we are as a country, and who we have the power to become.”

“Forty-seven years before construction workers discovered the skeleton in the old farmer’s well on Chicken Hill, a Jewish theater manager in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, named Moshe Ludlow had a vision about Moses. Moshe had this vision on a Monday morning in February as he was cleaning out the remnants of a Chick Webb one-night stand at his tiny All-American Dance Hall and Theater on Main Street.”

“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson. It was the Jackson 5 after all who put Ray Carney back in the game following four years on the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow - it described a philosophy and a territory, a neighborhood with borders and local customs.”

Over the course of twenty-three chapters Bryson explains the mysteries of the human body. The chapters are also riddled with information about the medical geniuses who discovered how the body works, how they tried to solve medical issues and some of the unique patients who helped with their discoveries.