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David Lindsay tours the typical American home, stopping in each room to examine the most taken-for-granted objects, and finds incredible stories behind even the most-overlooked items. In perhaps the most ignored room, the bathroom, he finds that Thomas Crapper did not in fact invent the flushable toilet, even though we've adopted both a verb and a noun from his name; that toothpaste, thankfully, finally replaced urine as a cleanser; that the inventor of Vaseline ate a spoonful of the stuff every day; and that (oddly) Germany ceded the brand name aspirin to the Allies as reparations for World War I. In the foyer we find the histories of the intercom and mailbox; in the kitchen we learn that the microwave oven came about because a chocolate bar melted in Percy Spencer's pocket as he walked by radar equipment.