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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America Paperback - 1999

by Bill Bryson


About this book

Bill Bryson's very first travel book, a sidesplittingly funny road trip around America. "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 trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels, and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibers. Traveling around thirty-eight of the lower states - united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity - he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes, and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land.

The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.

Summary

Bill Bryson's very first travel book, a sidesplittingly funny road trip around America.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 trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states - united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity - he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land.The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.

First line

I come from Des Moines.

Details

  • Title The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
  • Author Bill Bryson
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 349
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Black Swan Books, Limited, London
  • Date January 2, 1999
  • ISBN 9780552998086 / 0552998087
  • Dewey Decimal Code 917.304
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The Lost Continent : Travels in Small Town America
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The Lost Continent : Travels in Small Town America

by Bryson, Bill

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The Lost Continent
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