One Summer: America, 1927 Hardcover - 2013

Media reviews

“Bryson gets right to it, dancing the Charleston with his crisp, evocative prose through portraits and anecdotes of characters big and small. . . . At its best, the prose fizzes like just-poured champagne.”
—The Globe and Mail

“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. . . . This is a jolly jalopy ride of a book; Bryson runs down the byways of American history and finds diversion in every roadside stop.”
—Financial Times  

“This splendid book, written in the breezy and humorous style that has come to be Bryson's trademark, is sure to delight readers steeped in the history of the period as well as those looking to acquaint themselves with it for the first time.”
—Huffington Post  

“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, such as science or linguistics. With this book, he proves once again that he is able to juggle any number of different balls – the boxing career of Jack Dempsey, the origins of the Wall Street Crash, the history of the Ku Klux Klan – and create spellbinding patterns while never letting a single one drop.”
—Daily Mail (UK)

“One Summer is a delightful entertainment that gives the reader a good grounding in the nature and significance of the 1920s in America.”
—Winnipeg Free Press  

“Bryson’s book is a quirkily entertaining pop history of the single year, 1927, when the United States underwent a massive cultural revolution and shook off — for good and ill — any lingering sense of being second best. Bryson is simply caught up in his own enthusiasm for a period in which American was just beginning to produce its most powerful, most impressive, and often most dangerous invention: optimism.”
—Toronto Star  

 “One Summer is bursting with facts, whether amusing, disquieting, or downright weird. All are woven deftly into Bryson’s story of a few months when the 1920s truly roared.”
—National Post 

“Just to think of this book is to think of it as a sure-fire winning combination. What couldn’t so gifted a storyteller and effortless a stylist as Bryson do with the material on offer. . . . detail-rich, thoroughly entrancing.”
—Maclean’s  

“A popular chronicler of life and lore vividly charts a particularly pivotal season in American history. . . . Bryson’s American pride saturates this rewarding book. A distinctively drawn time capsule from a definitive epoch.”
—Kirkus Reviews