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The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid
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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.
Download or read book The Lost Continent written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Book Synopsis A Walk in the Woods by : Bill Bryson
Download or read book A Walk in the Woods written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.
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.
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 Random House. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Brysonâe(tm)s first travel book opened with the immortal line, âe~I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.âe(tm) 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 boyâe(tm)s growing up. But in Brysonâe(tm)s hands, it becomes everyoneâe(tm)s story, one that will speak volumes âe" especially to anyone who has ever been young.
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 . This book was released on 2007 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. In his funny memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was.
Book Synopsis Quicklet on Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - A Memoir (CliffNotes-like Summary) by : Becki Chiasson
Download or read book Quicklet on Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - A Memoir (CliffNotes-like Summary) written by Becki Chiasson and published by Hyperink Inc. This book was released on 2012-02-24 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABOUT THE BOOK “Growing up was easy. It required no thought or effort on my part. It was going to happen anyway. So what follows isn’t terribly eventful, I’m afraid. And yet it was by a very large margin the most fearful, thrilling, interesting, instructive, eye-popping, lustful, eager, troubled, untroubled, confused, serene, and unnerving time of my life.” So begins “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid,” which was published in 2006. It was a departure from Bill Bryson’s earlier books. His previous work, “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” a book about science written for the average Joe, had taken a lot out of him and he wanted to work on something easier. Bryson told the Guardian: “I promised my wife I would do a book I could stay at home to do ... and I promised my publisher that I would do something more amusing that would corral back the core of my readership, some of whom doubtless were slightly appalled and alienated by A Short History. And also, purely in a selfish way, I wanted to do a book that I wouldn't have to do a lot of hard thinking and research about. I did miss writing humorous things.” MEET THE AUTHOR Becki Chiasson is a Baltimore-based writer who received her BS in Mass Communications from Towson University. Although she spent some time in New York as a crossword puzzle editor, she returned to her hometown in Maryland in 2010 to focus on writing. Her favorite topics include video games and women's issues. When she's not busy writing up a storm, she crochets, plays video games, and bakes. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” centers on Bryson’s life as a young child in Des Moines, Iowa during the 1950s and follows Bryson through puberty. The plot is less of a structured narrative and more of a series of loosely related, humorous anecdotes about growing up during happier, simpler times. A central conceit to the book is the idea that Bryson was the Thunderbolt Kid, a superhero who could make his enemies (usually people Bryson deemed to be morons) disappear in a flash of light by casting a withering stare at them. This superpower is presented in all seriousness, although it is rather doubtful that it ever happened. The first time Bryson used his superpower, he was six years old. He was at a diner with his mother and discovered to his great chagrin that the ancient-looking man next to him had been drinking out of Bryson’s water glass. Worse still, the man had been eating poached eggs, which Bryson positively despised. Bryson freaked out, gagging, and the man only laughed, having no remorse at all. When he turned to leave, “as he reached out to open the door, bolts of electricity flew from my wildly dilated eyes and played over his body. He shimmered for an instant, contorted in a brief, silent rictus of agony, and was gone. It was the birth of ThunderVision. The world had just become a dangerous place for morons.” Buy a copy to keep reading!
Book Synopsis Summary of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by : Everest Media
Download or read book Summary of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid written by Everest Media and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-07-24T22:59:00Z with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Isometrics is a form of exercise that involves using any unyielding object and pushing against it with all your might from different positions to tone and strengthen different groups of muscles. It was popular in the 1950s, but my father was a sportswriter for The Des Moines Register, and so he would do isometrics on airplanes to travel to Major League cities. #2 In the 1950s, America was the richest country in the world. The Czekalinski family of Cleveland, Ohio, was shown in a magazine two weeks before my birth, surrounded by the two and a half tons of food that a typical blue-collar family ate in a year. #3 People were happy because they could have things they had never dreamed of having. They looked forward to the future, and many were excited about the small enrichments available right now. #4 My father, who was a sports columnist for the Des Moines Register, would go to the World Series every year for nearly forty years, from 1945 until his retirement. It was the high point of his working year. He would witness many memorable moments of baseball history, and he always seemed to be there when something significant occurred.
Book Synopsis Finding a New Midwestern History by : Jon K. Lauck
Download or read book Finding a New Midwestern History written by Jon K. Lauck and published by University of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In comparison to such regions as the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest and its culture have been neglected both by scholars and by the popular press. Historians as well as literary and art critics tend not to examine the Midwest in depth in their academic work. And in the popular imagination, the Midwest has never really ascended to the level of the proud, literary South; the cultured, democratic Northeast; or the hip, innovative West Coast. Finding a New Midwestern History revives and identifies anew the Midwest as a field of study by promoting a diversity of viewpoints and lending legitimacy to a more in-depth, rigorous scholarly assessment of a large region of the United States that has largely been overlooked by scholars. The essays discuss facets of midwestern life worth examining more deeply, including history, religion, geography, art, race, culture, and politics, and are written by well-known scholars in the field such as Michael Allen, Jon Butler, and Nicole Etcheson.
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 Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary Bill Bryson takes us from the Big Bang to the dawn of science in this book about basically everything. 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. Adapted from A Short History of Nearly Everything, the ground-breaking bestseller, this book is stunningly illustrated throughout, and accessible for all ages ************************************************************************ Reviews for A Short History of Nearly Everything: 'It's the sort of book I would have devoured as a teenager. It might well turn unsuspecting young readers into scientists.' Evening Standard 'I doubt that a better book for the layman about the findings of modern science has been written' Sunday Telegraph 'A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again' Daily Express 'The very book I have been looking for most of my life' Daily Mail
Download or read book The Herald written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Iowa Alumni Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare written by Bill Bryson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.
Download or read book At Home written by Bill Bryson and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of that classic of modern science writing, A Short History of Nearly Everything, comes a work of what you might call domestic science: our homes, how they work, and the fascinating history of how they got that way. 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 found 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 demostrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
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 Crown. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 876 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.
Book Synopsis The British National Bibliography by : Arthur James Wells
Download or read book The British National Bibliography written by Arthur James Wells and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 1922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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.
