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.
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 9780552772563
Number of pages: 672
Weight: 478 g
Dimensions: 197 x 128 x 42 mm
Bill Bryson is a true master of popular narrative. Over the course of his career, he has bestowed a beautiful clarity on even the most recondite of subjects...Has history ever been so enjoyable? - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
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 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
Bryson is a master of the sidelong, a man who can turn obscurity into hilarity with seemingly effortless charm - and One Summer: America 1927 is an entertaining addition to a body of work that is at its best when it celebrates the unexpected and the obscure...a jolly jalopy ride of a book; Bryson runs down the byways of American history and finds diversion in every roadside stop. - Erica Wagner, Financial Times
A wonderful book on a pivotal year, in which the gravitational pull of the world shifted from Europe to America. - Mail on Sunday
Has captured the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties in this entertaining and informative book. - Washington Post
This splendid book, written in the breezy and humorous style that has come to be Bryson's trademark, is sure to delight. - Huffington Post
Another winner...witty and engrossing. - Irish Independent
An endlessly fascinating overview of the period, using the events of Summer 1927 as its focal point, the book is obviously very well researched (I can imagine Bryson scouring through every major daily newspaper of the... More
I absolutely loved this! I hadn't read any Bill Bryson for a while and I think that I'd unfairly filed him away in my mind as being a bit too cuddly and fluffy and lacking any real substance, so I was... More
In “One Summer” we’re back to the Bryson of old. He keeps his story rattling along, as we follow the first manned flight, the adulation surrounding Charles Lindbergh and the folly of prohibition. All this with his... More
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