A Short History of Nearly Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Anchor Canada
ISBN 13 : 0385674503
Total Pages : 562 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (856 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of Nearly Everything by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Puffin
ISBN 13 : 9780241451946
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (519 download)

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Book Synopsis A Really Short History of Nearly Everything by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Really Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson and published by Puffin. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever wondered how we got from nothing to something? Or thought about how we can weigh the earth? Or wanted to reach the edge of the universe? Uncover the mysteries of time, space and life on earth in this extraordinary book - a journey from the centre of the planet to the dawn of the dinosaurs, and everything in between. And discover our own incredible journey, from single cell to civilisation, including the brilliant (and sometimes very bizarre) scientists who helped us find out the how and why.

At Home

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Author :
Publisher : Doubleday Canada
ISBN 13 : 0385679440
Total Pages : 713 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (856 download)

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Book Synopsis At Home by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book At Home written by Bill Bryson and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and At Home is likely to become the most illuminating book on the way we lived then and live now--the why and the where and the how of it--ever written. Now, in this handsome new edition, his sparkling prose will be enhanced by some 200 carefully curated full-colour images from both the past and the present. Selected from a staggering array of sources to bring Bill's journey to vivid life, these pictures will make reading At Home an immersive experience. When you've finished this book, you will see your house--and your daily life--in a new and revelatory light.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767926315
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s. Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and of his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0552562963
Total Pages : 53 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (525 download)

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Book Synopsis A Really Short History of Nearly Everything by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Really Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bill's own fascination with science began with a battered old schoolbook he had when he was about ten or eleven years old in America. It had an illustration that captivated him - a cutaway diagram showing Earth's interior as it would look if you cut into it with a large knife and carefully removed about a quarter of its bulk. And he very clearly remembers thinking: 'How do they know that?' Bill's story-telling skill makes the 'How?' and, just as importantly, the 'Who?' of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for all ages. In this exciting edition for younger readers, he covers the wonder and mysteries of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, the crackpot theories which held sway for far too long, the extraordinary accidental discoveries which suddenly advanced whole areas of science when the people were actually looking for something else (or in the wrong direction) and the mind-boggling fact that, somehow, the universe exists and, against all odds, life came to be on this wondrous planet we call home." -- publisher website.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Illustrated Edition

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Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0385663552
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (856 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of Nearly Everything, Illustrated Edition by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Illustrated Edition written by Bill Bryson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer. In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition

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Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0307885151
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition written by Bill Bryson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the acclaimed bestseller is lavishly illustrated to convey, in pictures as in words, Bill Bryson’s exciting, informative journey into the world of science. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body, confronts his greatest challenge yet: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as his territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. The result is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Now, in this handsome new edition, Bill Bryson’s words are supplemented by full-color artwork that explains in visual terms the concepts and wonder of science, at the same time giving face to the major players in the world of scientific study. Eloquently and entertainingly described, as well as richly illustrated, science has never been more involving or entertaining.

A Short History of Nearly Everything - 10th Anniversary Edition

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Author :
Publisher : Black Swan
ISBN 13 : 9780552779135
Total Pages : 672 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (791 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of Nearly Everything - 10th Anniversary Edition by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Short History of Nearly Everything - 10th Anniversary Edition written by Bill Bryson and published by Black Swan. This book was released on 2013 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now revised and updated to take in the major scientific developments of the past decade, A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's classic quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Winner of the Aventis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communcation Prize, it became a huge bestseller, and remains one of the most popular science books of all time. Bill Bryson's challenge was to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there wasn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, and takes us on an eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Turtleback Books
ISBN 13 : 9781417665488
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (654 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of Nearly Everything by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book A Short History of Nearly Everything written by Bill Bryson and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author traces the Big Bang through the rise of civilization, documenting his work with a host of the world's most advanced scientists and mathematicians to explain why things are the way they are.

At Home: Special Illustrated Edition

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Author :
Publisher : Doubleday
ISBN 13 : 0385537298
Total Pages : 738 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis At Home: Special Illustrated Edition by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book At Home: Special Illustrated Edition written by Bill Bryson and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig­ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposi­tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767931181
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis I'm a Stranger Here Myself by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book I'm a Stranger Here Myself written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

In a Sunburned Country

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767907663
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis In a Sunburned Country by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book In a Sunburned Country written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. This time in Australia. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity. Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. Wherever he goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging, and these beaming products of land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine fill the pages of this wonderful book. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide.

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

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Author :
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767910478
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-09-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the English language’s most skilled and beloved writers guides us all toward precise, mistake-free grammar. As usual Bill Bryson says it best: “English is a dazzlingly idiosyncratic tongue, full of quirks and irregularities that often seem willfully at odds with logic and common sense. This is a language where ‘cleave’ can mean to cut in half or to hold two halves together; where the simple word ‘set’ has 126 different meanings as a verb, 58 as a noun, and 10 as a participial adjective; where if you can run fast you are moving swiftly, but if you are stuck fast you are not moving at all; [and] where ‘colonel,’ ‘freight,’ ‘once,’ and ‘ache’ are strikingly at odds with their spellings.” As a copy editor for the London Times in the early 1980s, Bill Bryson felt keenly the lack of an easy-to-consult, authoritative guide to avoiding the traps and snares in English, and so he brashly suggested to a publisher that he should write one. Surprisingly, the proposition was accepted, and for “a sum of money carefully gauged not to cause embarrassment or feelings of overworth,” he proceeded to write that book—his first, inaugurating his stellar career. Now, a decade and a half later, revised, updated, and thoroughly (but not overly) Americanized, it has become Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, more than ever an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. With some one thousand entries, from “a, an” to “zoom,” that feature real-world examples of questionable usage from an international array of publications, and with a helpful glossary and guide to pronunciation, this precise, prescriptive, and—because it is written by Bill Bryson—often witty book belongs on the desk of every person who cares enough about the language not to maul or misuse or distort it.

At Home

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Author :
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0767919394
Total Pages : 593 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis At Home by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book At Home written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these pages, the beloved Bill Bryson gives us a fascinating history of the modern home, taking us on a room-by-room tour through his own house and using each room to explore the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. As he takes us through the history of our modern comforts, Bryson demonstrates that whatever happens in the world eventually ends up in our home, in the paint, the pipes, the pillows, and every item of furniture. Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and his sheer prose fluency makes At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

One Summer

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Author :
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385537824
Total Pages : 637 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis One Summer by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book One Summer written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book A GoodReads Reader's Choice In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression. All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.

Writing With Skill, Level 2: Student Workbook (The Complete Writer)

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Author :
Publisher : Peace Hill Press
ISBN 13 : 1942968248
Total Pages : 607 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (429 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing With Skill, Level 2: Student Workbook (The Complete Writer) by : Susan Wise Bauer

Download or read book Writing With Skill, Level 2: Student Workbook (The Complete Writer) written by Susan Wise Bauer and published by Peace Hill Press. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time-tested classical techniques--the imitation and analysis of great writers--combined with original composition exercises in history, science, biography, and literature The Student Workbook encourages independent composition, while the Instructor Text contains easy-to-use supporting information for the teacher, rubrics for grading, sample compositions, and dialogue to use while teaching. Together, the Student Workbook and Instructor Text provide a full year of middle-grade writing instruction, preparing students to enter high-level rhetoric. Skills Taught: One- and two-level outlining Writing chronological narratives, biographical sketches, descriptions, and sequences across the curriculum Constructing basic literary essays on fiction and poetry Researching and documenting source material First volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition Features of the program: Writing assignments are modeled on examples from great literature and classic nonfiction All source material for assignments is provided—no other books are needed This Student Workbook encourages independence by directing all assignments to the student Instructor Text (sold separately) provides scripted dialogue to use when the student has difficulty, plus detailed guidance on how to evaluate the student’s work Second volume of four that will prepare students for high-level rhetoric and composition

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

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Author :
Publisher : Anchor Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307373622
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by : Bill Bryson

Download or read book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2010-04-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the middle of the United States in the middle of the last century. A book that delivers on the promise that it is “laugh-out-loud funny.” Some say that the first hints that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came from his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman. Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird and wonderful world of 1950s America. He modestly claims that this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting much larger slowly. But for the rest of us, it is a laugh-out-loud book that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.