The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through my Childhood - Softcover

Bryson, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552772542 ISBN 13: 9780552772549

Publisher: Black Swan, 2007

Synopsis

Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ In this deeply funny and personal memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, in the curious world of 1950s Middle America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about one boy’s growing up. But in Bryson’s hands, it becomes everyone’s story, one that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.

About this title

Review:

"A wittily incisive book about innocence, and its limits, but in no sense an innocent book... Like Alan Bennett, another ironist posing as a sentimentalist, Bryson can play the teddy-bear and then deliver a sudden, grizzly-style swipe... might tell us as much about the oddities of the American way as a dozen think-tanks" (Boyd Tonkin Independent)

"A funny, effortlessly readable, quietly enchanted memoir... Bryson also provides a quirky social history of America... he always manages to slam on the brakes with a good joke just when things might get sentimental" (Daily Mail)

"Characteristic mixture of bemused wit, acerbic astonishment and sweet benevolence... Evocation of an era is near perfect: tender, hilarious and true" (The Times)

"Outlandishly and improbably entertaining... inevitably [I] would be reduced to body-racking, tear-inducing, de-couching laughter" (The New York Times)

"Seriously funny" (The Sunday Times)

Book Description:

Bill Bryson on his most personal journey yet: into his own childhood in America's Mid-West.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Swan
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0552772542
• ISBN 13: 9780552772549
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416