“Vastly informative and vastly entertaining…A scholarly and fascinating book.” —Los Angeles TimesWith dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language.From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can’t), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson explores English grammar and word origins as he tell...

'So, if you Americans already have cornflakes and Woolworths, what brings you to England?'It's 1973, and a young man from Des Moines, Iowa, has arrived on the ferry at Dover. He intends to conquer the whole of the island, like Caesar attempted before him.But Caesar didn't have to deal with counterpanes, kippers, Cadbury's Curly Wurlies, or Mrs Smegma the landlady's eccentric house rules. As Bill travels the length and breadth of Britain, through villages with names...

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...

Bill Bryson returns to his internationally beloved topic, Britain, with his first travel book in fifteen years.In 1995, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his home. The hilarious book he wrote about that journey, Notes from a Small Island, became one of the most loved books of recent decades.Now, in this hotly anticipated new travel book, his first in fifteen years and sure to be greet...

This collection gathers the best travel essays from The New Yorker, Harpers, GQ and more—featuring Paul Theroux, Alice Gregory, Dave Eggers and others.Why do I travel? Why does anyone of us travel? Bill Bryson poses these questions in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2016, and though he admits, "I wasn't at all sure I knew the answer," these questions start us on the path of some fascinating exploratio...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERINTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICENAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY Maclean's • The Washington Post • USA Today • IndigoBill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body. As compulsively readable as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at ...

**THE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A wonder-filled quest to understand everything that has happened in the history of the earth, from the Big Bang theory to the rise of civilization and beyond.“Brims with strange and amazing facts . . . a modern classic of sciencewriting.” —The New York Times**From the beloved and bestselling author of the hilarious, bittersweet memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and numerous bestselling travel books, includ...

A wonder-filled quest to understand everything that has happened in the history of the earth, from the Big Bang theory to the rise of civilization and beyond—revised to reflect the last two decades of scientific advancement.How did we get from being nothing at all to where we are today? How did the age of the dinosaurs eventually give way to the age of the iPhone? In this completely revised update to the international phenomenon A Short History of Nearly Everyt...

This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies.First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has...

In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth (so famous that Minnesota consider r...

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.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 ...

Deliciously funny, fact-filled and adventurous, In a Sunburned Country takes us on a grand tour of Australia. It's a place where interesting things happen all the time, from a Prime Minister lost — yes, lost — while swimming at sea, to Japanese cult members who may (entirely unnoticed) have set off an atomic bomb on their 500,000 acre property in the great western desert.Australia is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. I...