The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Softcover

Bryson, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060920084 ISBN 13: 9780060920081

Publisher: HarperPerennial, 2001

Synopsis

An inspiring and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town. "The kind of book Steinbeck might have written if he'd traveled with David Letterman."-- "New York" magazine

About this title

Review:

A travelogue by Bill Bryson is as close to a sure thing as funny books get. The Lost Continent is no exception. Following an urge to rediscover his youth (he should know better), the author leaves his native Des Moines, Iowa, in a journey that takes him across 38 states. Lucky for us, he brought a notebook.

With a razor wit and a kind heart, Bryson serves up a colourful tale of boredom, kitsch, and beauty when you least expect it. Gentler elements aside, The Lost Continent is an amusing book. Here's Bryson on the women of his native state: "I will say this, however--and it's a strange, strange thing--the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable ... I don't know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self- inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked."

Yes, Bill, but be honest: what do you really think?

Review:

"Funny, biting, outrageous, and more truthful than we may care to admit. I love small towns, ...--" Detroit Free Press""The Lost Continent is paradoxically touching -- a melancholy memoir in the form of snide travelogue."--" Newsweek"Picture W.C. Fields on a driving tour of thirty-eight American states, and you have some sense of Bill Bryson's "The Lost Continent."--" Pittsburgh Press

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperPerennial
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060920084
• ISBN 13: 9780060920081
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320