Download or read book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's most beloved writers and New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s. Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid." Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and of his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

Download or read book The Lost Continent written by Bill Bryson and published by VNR AG. This book was released on 1989 with total page 326 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.

Download or read book I m a Stranger Here Myself written by Bill Bryson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

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 The Body written by Bill Bryson and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A must-read owner’s manual for every body. Take a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body in this “delightful, anecdote-propelled read” (The Boston Globe) from the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything. With a new Afterword. “You will marvel at the brilliance and vast weirdness of your design." —The Washington Post Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Brysonesque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.” The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information. As addictive as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best.

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.

Download or read book One Summer written by David Baldacci and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Baldacci delivers a moving, family drama about learning to love again after terrible heartbreak and loss in this classic New York Times bestseller—soon to be a Hallmark original movie. It's almost Christmas, but there is no joy in the house of terminally ill Jack and his family. With only a short time left to live, he spends his last days preparing to say goodbye to his devoted wife, Lizzie, and their three children. Then, unthinkably, tragedy strikes again: Lizzie is killed in a car accident. With no one able to care for them, the children are separated from each other and sent to live with family members around the country. Just when all seems lost, Jack begins to recover in a miraculous turn of events. He rises from what should have been his deathbed, determined to bring his fractured family back together. Struggling to rebuild their lives after Lizzie's death, he reunites everyone at Lizzie's childhood home on the oceanfront in South Carolina. And there, over one unforgettable summer, Jack will begin to learn to love again, and he and his children will learn how to become a family once more.

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.

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 28 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!

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 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.

Download or read book Quicklet on Bill Bryson s A Short History of Nearly Everything CliffNotes like Summary written by Nicole Cipri and published by Hyperink Inc. This book was released on 2012-02-24 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ABOUT THE BOOK In his introduction to A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson describes a childhood experience common to many of us: a brief infatuation with science, with all its potential and possibility. For Bryson, it was inspired by a textbook’s cut-away illustration of the interior strata of the Earth, with the molten core at the center. For myself, it was a children’s biography of Jacques Cousteau. Excited by the nearly endless prospects of science, the questions that could finally satisfy a child’s curiosity, we both reached for more books, and found our budding passions firmly squashed by an impenetrable wall of unfathomable writing. As Bryson writes in his introduction, “there seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting.” Bryson wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything as an antidote to the dry-as-dust science tomes that weigh down students’ backpacks. It is a layman’s love song to science, to its strange history and stranger characters. Published in 2003, it has been become a popular addition to the popular science genre. MEET THE AUTHOR Nicole Cipri is a restless wanderer and passionate writer. A graduate of the Evergreen State School in Olympia, WA, Nicole has since written about such varied topics as modern urban farming, the role of glitterbombing as political theater, and the economic impacts of natural disasters. You can follow her adventures on Twitter, @nicolecipri. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Drama abounded in the 19th century. After the discovery of the first dinosaur fossil in 1784, and with subsequent uncovering of massive bones that belonged to other extinct species, there was an uncomfortable public debate concerning extinctions. Why, after all, would an omniscient God create species of animals only to casually wipe them out? Throughout history, the sciences have routinely butted heads with the Church, a trend that continues today. From geology and paleontology, Bryson moves to chemistry. With its origins in the enigmatic studies of alchemy, chemistry evolved along its own strange path. Bryson tells one exemplifying story, in which an amateur alchemist became convinced the he could distill gold from human urine. “The similarity of color,” Bryson explains, “seems to have been a factor in his conclusion.” In an attempt to prove his hypothesis, the man collected fifty buckets of human urine, which he kept in his cellar. After a few months, the man noted, the substance in the buckets began to glow or explode into flames when exposed to air. He had failed in distilling gold from urine, but he had succeeded in creating phosphorous. Buy a copy to keep reading!

Download or read book Bill Bryson written by Scott P. Richert and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of writer Bill Bryson that describes his era, major works, and life.

Download or read book Sports Journalism written by James R. Schaffer and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-10-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sports Journalism combines decades of on-the-field reporting and in-the-classroom teaching to present the most comprehensive and contemporary playbook for student journalists. The third edition features expanded coverage of social media, writing and interviewing skills, as well as discussions on race and gender in the world of sports. Two new authors, Steve Schaffer and Amie Just, join the third edition with stories and insights from their nonstop lives as sports journalists. Since today’s sportswriters are often also bloggers, videographers, commentators, talk show anchors and webmasters, the authors have filled the book with the technologies and techniques they use across their many roles. Chapters provide exercises for practicing concepts and skills as well as discussion prompts about contemporary issues in sports. Features: New chapters on social media and on building relationships with sources, colleagues and media contacts Interviews with journalists whose success is measured by their many, many followers Discussion questions that get students talking about issues like paying collegiate athletes, violence in sports and its long-term physical and mental effects on players and equality issues on and off the field An expanded glossary that includes terms such as “hot takes,” “scrum” and “trolls” Writing tips for journalistic style including how to use numbers and statistics accurately and effectively Helpful examples on interview techniques Discussion of legal terms that apply to published work Promotion of the ethical standards set forth by the American Sports News Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists

Download or read book The Book Review Digest written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1940 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Refugia Faith written by Debra Rienstra and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Refugia Faith, Debra Rienstra explores nature's refugia--places where life endures in a crisis--and applies this model to faith. Drawing from theology, nature writing, and science, she examines how Christian spirituality and practice must adapt for a climate-altered planet.

Download or read book Introduction to Cocaine Bear written by Gilad James, PhD and published by Gilad James Mystery School. This book was released on with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Introduction to Cocaine Bear" is a book by Matthew Kyler about the infamous case of a black bear that was found dead in 1985 in the woods of Georgia, with over 70 pounds of cocaine strapped to its back. The bear had apparently ingested the cocaine, which led to its death. The book, which is part history and part fiction, seeks to unravel the mystery surrounding this bizarre incident. It explores the life of the bear, a former circus performer called Pablo, as well as the lives of the people who crossed paths with him - including drug smugglers, law enforcement officials, and a young woman named Bo Massey, who finds herself in possession of the bear's body. Through a series of interconnected stories, Kyler weaves a tapestry of Southern Gothic-style tales that revolve around the bizarre circumstances of the bear's life and death. The book is at once a darkly comic crime story, a meditation on the human condition, and a haunting portrait of a place and time. Ultimately, "Introduction to Cocaine Bear" is a captivating and thought-provoking meditation on the folly of human ambition and the unpredictable nature of life.