Normal view MARC view ISBD view

Bryson, Bill.

The lost continent : travels in small town America / Bill Bryson. - London : Black Swan, 1999, c1989. - 349 p. ; 20 cm.

Originally published: London : Secker & Warburg, 1989.

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 town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the films of his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Dead Squaw, Coma, 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 found 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 foreigner in his own country.

ISBN: 0552998087 9780552998086 0552998087(pbk.) : �6.99

Nat. Bib. No.: GB99-26198

Nat. Bib. Agency Control No.: 0552998087 Uk

Subjects--Personal Names:
Bryson, Bill--Travel--United States.
Bryson, Bill, 1951- --Journeys--United States.

Subjects--Topical Terms:
Cities and towns--United States.

Subjects--Geographic Terms:
United States--Description and travel.
United States--Social life and customs--1971-
USA.

LC Class. No.: E169.04 / B78 1989

Dewey Class. No.: 917.304927