Awards

• Short-listed for Audie Award History 2014
• Short-listed for Audie Awards History 2014

Overview

In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.) It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led to the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that have made him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he rolls out an unforgettable cast of vivid and eccentric personalities to bring to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage and changed the world for ever.

Full Product Details

9781486220298

Table of Contents

Reviews

'A fascinating snapshot of a season during which America, for better or worse, ushered in the modern world.' -- Sunday Times 'Another winner ... witty and engrossing.' -- The Irish Independent 'Bryson offers delicious detail and breathtaking suspense about events whose outcomes are already known. A glorious look at one summer in America.' -- Booklist 'Few writers of nonfiction, and, let’s be honest, few enough writers of novels, can crack the narrative whip like Bryson. One Summer fairly whirls along ... full of exhilarating, fact-filled fun ... surely the most sublime distraction published this year.' -- The Observer '...a gripping slice of history with all sorts of reverberant echoes of today ... Bryson, the travel writer turned non-fiction impresario, has now invented what may be an entirely new genre of non-fiction: the brief history of an era told through the biography of a summer. It is a book from which you can read many lessons or just revel in the writing.' -- The Times

'A fascinating snapshot of a season during which America, for better or worse, ushered in the modern world.' -- Sunday Times 'Another winner ... witty and engrossing.' -- The Irish Independent 'Bryson offers delicious detail and breathtaking suspense about events whose outcomes are already known. A glorious look at one summer in America.' -- Booklist 'Few writers of nonfiction, and, let's be honest, few enough writers of novels, can crack the narrative whip like Bryson. One Summer fairly whirls along ... full of exhilarating, fact-filled fun ... surely the most sublime distraction published this year.' -- The Observer '...a gripping slice of history with all sorts of reverberant echoes of today ... Bryson, the travel writer turned non-fiction impresario, has now invented what may be an entirely new genre of non-fiction: the brief history of an era told through the biography of a summer. It is a book from which you can read many lessons or just revel in the writing.' -- The Times

Author Information

Bill Bryson’s bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestseller was At Home: a Short History of Private Life. Bill Bryson is a bestselling author, known for The Lost Continent, A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. His acclaimed work of popular science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of its decade in the UK. His new book The Body: A Guide for Occupants is an extraordinary exploration of the human body which will have you marvelling at the form you occupy.

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