The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid
Travels Through my Childhood
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
From one of our most beloved and bestselling authors, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s.
Born in 1951 in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24 carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generation, Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around the house wearing a jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel round his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing evildoers (in his head) as The Thunderbolt Kid.
Using his childhood fantasy life as a springboard, Bill Bryson recreates family life in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality. In a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars, Bill Bryson's days followed in reassuringly cosy succession, enlivened by modest triumphs and disasters.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Rise and Fall of the Thunderbolt Kid is a modern classic, full of Bill Bryson's inimitable, pitch-perfect observations.
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'Seriously funny' The Sunday Times
'A funny, effortlessly readable, quietly enchanted memoir' Daily Mail
'A wittily incisive book about innocence, and its limits, but in no sense an innocent book... Like Alan Bennett, another ironist posing as a sentimentalist, Bryson can play the teddy-bear and then deliver a sudden, grizzly-style swipe' Independent
'Outlandishly and improbably entertaining... inevitably [I] would be reduced to body-racking, tear-inducing, de-couching laughter' New York Times
'Characteristic mixture of bemused wit, acerbic astonishment and sweet benevolence... His evocation of an era is near perfect: tender, hilarious and true' The Times
Customer Reviews
The life and times .....Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson at his best. So like my own childhood I began to wonder how he had done his research. Singapore 47
An absolute must-read
This is one of my favourite books of all time. I must read it about twice a year if not more.
Bill Bryson's humorous and affectionate description of his childhood in Des Moines will have you laughing out loud, pausing for thought, and even getting a bit teary-eyed. If, like me, you are interested in the USA in the 1950-60s, you will love this.
I have been waiting for Bill Bryson's work to come on iBooks for ages, and am over the moon that I can now carry this book with me on my iOS devices. A big thank you to the publishers and to Apple!!
Buy this. Read it. You won't regret it!!