One Summer: America 1927

Author(s): Bill Bryson

American

In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. 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, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world.


Product Information

Let our favourite writer of narrative non-fiction take you back to a summer when America came of age and changed the world for ever.

"A fascinating snapshot of a season during which America, for better or worse, ushered in the modern world." Sunday Times "A gifted raconteur...The book is filled with eccentric, flamboyant characters and memorable stories...highly amusing." Guardian "A wonderful book on a pivotal year, in which the gravitational pull of the world shifted from Europe to America." Mail on Sunday "A great new form of literature: biography of a few months in one country." -- Matt Ridley The Times (Books of the Year) "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." Observer

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. His acclaimed book on the history of science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Society's Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award. 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. He was born in the American Mid-West, and lives in the UK.

General Fields

  • : 9780552772563
  • : Transworld Publishers Limited
  • : Transworld Publishers Limited
  • : 0.5
  • : June 2014
  • : 198mm X 127mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Bill Bryson
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 973.915
  • : 672
  • : Yes - b&w