Bill Bryson - Travel, Language, Humor, Nearly Everything

Do you think Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" at 624 pages for the hardcover illustrated edition or 560 pages for the paperback is still too long, even though it's about, well, nearly everything? Try "A Really Short History of Nearly Everything." It's only 176 pages.

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." So begins Bryson's account of traveling through 38 states in his mother's Chevy. This is essential reading for anyone who's ever wanted to drive around the United States while avoiding the interstates as much as possible.

"...funny, biting, outrageous and more truthful than we may care to admit." — Detroit Free Press

"[Bryson] has a sharp eye for absurdity in the commonplace." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From northernmost Norway to Istanbul, Bryson covers Europe in a journey sprinkled with wry observations and reminiscences of his first sojourn at age 20. Bryson prefers lesser-known places in his journeys, and he doesn't mind sharing some of his less pleasant experiences.

Before returning to America to live after almost twenty years on British soil, Bryson takes a grand tour. "Suddenly," Bryson writes, "in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it."

"A fond, funny portrait of Britain...{There are] belly laughs to be found...a kind of Dave Barry-meets-Paul Theroux in a British commuter train." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Bryson links up with his long-ago travelling companion Steven Katz. They're both out of shape, and their goal is to walk the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.

"This is a seriously funny book. But Bryson also writes most beautifully about the loveliness of the forest and the mountains." — Sue Townsend in the Sunday Times (UK)

"Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud." — Chicago Sun-Times

After Bryson moved back to the States, a British magazine editor and friend ropes him into writing a weekly column about getting reacquainted with his native country.

"Bryson writes about...America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny." — San Francisco Examiner

Bryson's book of his travels in Australia acknowledges a popular Australian poem which contains the line "I love a sunburnt country." He does this "in the hope of forestalling ten thousand or so letters from readers pointing out that it should be called In a Sunburnt Country. I know it should, but it isn't."

In this book, Bryson applies his trademark wit, sense of wonder, and observation to a country with a fierce landscape, some of the deadliest wildlife on Earth, and its wonderful people.

Note: The UK edition is called Down Under.

This is a short book, but all the profits go to the humanitarian organization CARE. Bill Bryson visited Kenya at CARE's invitation and found a land of beautiful landscape and a vibrant culture. He also found dangerous snakes, insects and large predators. Kenya is also a land best with the serious problems of refugees, AIDS, drought, and grinding poverty.

This collection of audiobooks is read by Bill Bryson. They are audio CDs with abridged versions of the books.

Bryson combines his well-developed sense of humor with his love of the English language. The result is a book about a subject many would think would be dull, but given the Bryson treatment, this book about English and how it developed is downright entertaining.



Note: The title of the UK edition is Mother Tongue: The English Language

This audiobook is made up of the six-program series on the BBC based on Bryson's The Mother Tongue.

Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill are all said to have observed that Britain and the United States are "two nations separated by a common language." Having lived and worked as a writer in both countries, Bill Bryson is well-qualified to tackle the brand of English spoken in America. With a plethora of anecdotes, he combines scholarship and his light, humorous touch to explaining how the language developed in this new land.

This was Bryson's first book, published when he was a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s. It's been updated with 60% new material, according to Library Journal. Bryson lends a helping hand to people who want to get English right, and he does it in a very readable fashion.

This is a book that will answer a number of difficult questions about the English language. What is the difference between "immanent" and "imminent"? What is the singular form of graffiti? What is the difference between "acute" and "chronic"? What is the former name of "Moldova"? These and more are answered with this handy guide.

"One of the best guides to usage there is. I cannot imagine an English-speaking person [who] would not rejoice in [it]." — Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe

Did you think your science textbooks were dry and boring? So did Bill Bryson, so he's written this book which covers nearly everything from the tiniest subatomic particle to the vastness of intergalactic space and how humans figured it all out. Or at least how they'd figured it out so far. "This is a book about how it happened," Bryson writes. "In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since."

Bill Bryson was born in Iowa in 1951. As a small boy, he discovered an old football jersey hanging in the basement. He put it on and with a towel around his neck for a cape, he was transformed (in his mind, at least) into the Thunderbolt Kid, vanquisher of morons and leaper of tall buildings. The 1950s and 1960s in the middle of America were a different time, and Bryson brings it all back with his affectionate, wry humor. We meet his parents, both writers for the same newspaper, his childhood friend (and later Appalachian Trail companion) Stephen Katz, and the gleefully destructive Willoughby brothers.

Bryson applies his genial nature, his engaging skepiticism and his unrivaled gift for storytelling to bring us the real William Shakespeare. Although the Bard was a prolific writer, little is known about his life, so Bryson tackles the research into how Shakespeare lived in his world. He touches on the history of English theater and documents the efforts of earlier scholars. He also tells of the eccentric American Delia Bacon, who was convinced, without evidence, that her namesake Francis Bacon wrote the Bard's plays.