THE LOST CONTINENT Travels in Small-Town America
Bill Bryson
Perenial, 1990
Bill Bryson's travel books are best-sellers and it's easy to see why. He combines interesting facts with humorous commentary. He captures the experience of the bulk of American tourists, whether abroad or driving around the country on summer vacation. Sometimes vulgar, sometimes irreverent, his books make amusing and light summer reading.
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever. Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. ... Everybody in Des Moines is strangely serene."
"I was headed for Nebraska. Now there's a sentence you don't want to have to say too often if you can possible help it. Nebraska must be the most unexciting of all the states. Compared with it, Iowa is paradise. Iowa at least is fertile and green and has a hill. Nebraska is like a 75,000-square-mile bare patch. In the middle of the state is a river called the Platte, which at some times of the year is two or three miles wide. It looks impressive until you realize that it is only about four inches deep. You could cross it in a wheelchair. On a landscape without any contours or depressions to shape it, the Platte just lies there, like a drink spilled across a tabletop. It is the most exciting thing in the state."
"I hate the way these places let you get all the way there before disclosing just how steep and confiscatory the admission price is. ... I mean honestly, $24.50 just to walk around a restored village for a couple of hours. I gave silent thanks that I had ditched the wife and kids at Manchester Airport. A day out here with the family could cost almost $100 - and that's before paying for ice creams and soft drinks and sweatshirts saying, BOY, WERE WE SCREWED AT COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG."
"National park visitors' centers are always the same. They always have some displays in glass cases that manage to be both boring and uninformative, ... , some racks of books and brochures with titles like Pewter in History and Vegetables of Old Philadelphia, ... "
Other titles by the same author:
- A Walk in the Woods (walking the Appalachian Trail)
- Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe
- Notes From a Small Island (England)
- In a Sunburned Country (Australia)
Bill Bryson
Perenial, 1990
Bill Bryson's travel books are best-sellers and it's easy to see why. He combines interesting facts with humorous commentary. He captures the experience of the bulk of American tourists, whether abroad or driving around the country on summer vacation. Sometimes vulgar, sometimes irreverent, his books make amusing and light summer reading.
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever. Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. ... Everybody in Des Moines is strangely serene."
"I was headed for Nebraska. Now there's a sentence you don't want to have to say too often if you can possible help it. Nebraska must be the most unexciting of all the states. Compared with it, Iowa is paradise. Iowa at least is fertile and green and has a hill. Nebraska is like a 75,000-square-mile bare patch. In the middle of the state is a river called the Platte, which at some times of the year is two or three miles wide. It looks impressive until you realize that it is only about four inches deep. You could cross it in a wheelchair. On a landscape without any contours or depressions to shape it, the Platte just lies there, like a drink spilled across a tabletop. It is the most exciting thing in the state."
"I hate the way these places let you get all the way there before disclosing just how steep and confiscatory the admission price is. ... I mean honestly, $24.50 just to walk around a restored village for a couple of hours. I gave silent thanks that I had ditched the wife and kids at Manchester Airport. A day out here with the family could cost almost $100 - and that's before paying for ice creams and soft drinks and sweatshirts saying, BOY, WERE WE SCREWED AT COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG."
"National park visitors' centers are always the same. They always have some displays in glass cases that manage to be both boring and uninformative, ... , some racks of books and brochures with titles like Pewter in History and Vegetables of Old Philadelphia, ... "
Other titles by the same author:
- A Walk in the Woods (walking the Appalachian Trail)
- Neither Here Nor There, Travels in Europe
- Notes From a Small Island (England)
- In a Sunburned Country (Australia)
