Bill Bryson

An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town.

Travels in Small Town America

The Lost Continent

Rose Stanley

This, Bill Bryson's first foray into travel writing (or at least his first big hit), is a bittersweet trip to a range of places connected with his childhood and youth. The overall feel is slightly melancholy - despite flashes of Bryson's trademark caustic humour and some genuinely interesting facts. It's kind of the opposite of a Lonely Planet guide - a list of places Bryson visits so you don't have to, for which I can only salute him.

Iestyn Lloyd

Martha F.

Apurva Chitnis

Pierke Bosschieter

Matt Illing

Wilde

Barbara

Sam Al-Wahid

Caitlin Bohannon

Scordatura

Wonko the Sane

Sara Piteira 

Keith Lang

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

Travels in Small-Town America

Katie Galvin

Elizabeth Moore

Nadine N.

Angbeen Abbas

"Here in one volume are two comic masterpieces by Bill Bryson ; - The Lost Continent is the story of Bryson's return to the land of his youth; - Neither Here nor There Bryson is in Europe, travelling the breadth of the continent."--Publisher. description.

The Lost Continent Travels in Small Town America

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