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Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century-1951-in the middle of the United States-Des Moines, Iowa-in the middle of the largest generation in American history-the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)-in his head-as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such bestsellers as The Mother Tongue" and "Made in America", decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland - and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him. But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of modern-day Britain, and to analyze what he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings, and place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey, and Shellow Bowells. With wit and irreverence, Bill Bryson presents the ludicrous and the endearing in equal measure. The result is a social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain."

After tales from the USA and Britain, Bill Bryson turns his roving eye to Australia, the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest, flattest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. It has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way that anywhere else. Yet when Bill Bryson travelled to Australia he promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, the cities safe and clean, the food is excellent, the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. He tries to find out why Aussies are so cool, digging up a past that reveals convicts, explorers, gold diggers and outlaws.

Des Moines, Iowa born writer Bryson's first success was the travel book The Lost Continent". After living in England for several years, he wanted to go back to the USA to find the perfect little US town of his past, he lovingly called Amalgam. More travel books followed, in the form of "Neither Here Nor There" (where he travels through Europe), "Notes From A Small Island" (where he travels around the United Kingdom, before returning back with his to the USA to live there for good) and "A Walk In The Woods" (where he walks the Appalachian trail). After moving back to the States, Bryson started to write a column for "The Mail on Sunday Night and Day" magazine. This is a collection of these column entries. Bryson writes about everything from everyday chores, to sueing people, the beach, TV, movies, air conditioners, college, Americana, injury dangers, wasting resources and holiday seasons."

An entertaining, anecdotal look at the origins of language and ideas in the USA. Bryson explains why two bicycle repairmen from Ohio succeeded in mastering manned flight, why the assassination of President Garfield led to the invention of air conditioning, and many other improbable but true facts.

In Neither Here nor There" Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein."

Nejdelší nepřerušená stezka na světě, Appalačská stezka, se táhne podél východního pobřeží USA, z Georgie do Maine, nádhernou krajinou, která patří k nejkrásnějším v Americe. Dobrodruh Bil Bryson se svým společníkem se po ní vydal pěšky, před sebou víc než 3500 kilometrů horské divočiny plné medvědů, rysů, hadů a jedovatých rostlin. Potýkal se s krutou nepřízní počasí, nespolehlivými mapami a svérázným parťákem, jehož jedinou touhou bylo lehnout si v motelu do postele a koukat na Akta X. Bryson se přesto dál probíjel nejrozsáhlejší spletí lesů, které děsily cestovatele přes tři stovky let, a pokoušel se dostát svému největšímu přání: neumřít pod širým nebem, ale pěkně slušně v posteli...

Humorně laděný cestopis napsaný zvídavým a přemýšlivým autorem, který si pro svůj osobitý styl už stačil ve světě získat nemalou oblibu. Proto jsme usoudili, že by byla nesmírná škoda, kdyby tento svérázný gentleman zůstal českým čtenářům osobou neznámou, a že je tudíž nejvyšší čas "pozvat" ho na pulty našich knihkupectví. Jeho kniha je plná nečekaných pohledů, postřehů, setkání a zážitků, přičemž se jen tak mimochodem dozvíte ty nejzajímavější věci o Austrálii. Bill vám bude vyprávět o jejích obyvatelích, nádherné, nespoutané a nezaměnitelné přírodě, o kultuře, o dávné historii i současnosti. Ti, kdo už v Austrálii byli, se po přečtení téhle knížky zatouží znovu se tam vrátit, a ti, co to štěstí dosud neměli, začnou dozajista šetřit na letenku.

Bill Brysons first travel book opened with the immortal line, I come from Des Moines.Somebody had to. In this deeply funny new book, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, in the curious world of 1950s America.It was a ha ppy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout.This is a book about one boys growing up.But in Brysons hands, it becomes everyones story, one that will speak volumes especially to anyone who has ever been young.Upozornenie: Vzhľadom na častejšie obmeny vydaní tejto knihy v zahraničí, kus, ktorý vám zašleme, nemusí mať rovnakú obálku ako je zobrazená tu. Zobrazená obálka môže byť iba ilustračná. Obsah knihy aj cena budú však identické, bez oh ľadu na obálku.

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."

Bill Bryson je jedním z nejoblíbenějších a nejprodávanějších spisovatelů na světě. Ve Stručné historii téměř všeho se vydává na vrcholnou cestu – k nejzajímavějším a nejdůležitějším otázkám, na něž věda hledá odpovědi. Je to úžasná cesta, celoživotní intelektuální odysea, protože tento nenasytně zvědavý spisovatel se pokouší pochopit všechno, co se událo od velkého třesku po zrození civilizace.

The longest continuous footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine, through some of the most arresting and celebrated landscapes in America. At the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack. Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.

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

In "At Home", Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made "A Short History of Nearly Everything" one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live. This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and on the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. And he discovered that, although there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement - and even a little danger - lurking in the corners of every home.

From one of the most beloved authors of our time--more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone--a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. "Houses aren't refuges from history. They are wh ere history ends up." Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the or dinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig-ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in t he paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture. Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverti ng exposi-tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make "At Home" one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life. "From the Hardcover edition."

A történelem nagy eseményei mellett észrevétlenül elsikkad az elmúlt századok átlagembereinek élete, akik csendben tették a maguk dolgát - ettek, aludtak, dolgoztak, és megpróbáltak kicsit kényelmesebben élni. Pedig valójában ők formálták meg világunkat, és felfedezéseik lépten-nyomon felbukkannak mai otthonainkban is. Éppen ezért Bill Bryson nekilátott, hogy saját házában szobáról szobára felderítse, hogyan jöttek létre életünk mindennapi kellékei. Útközben elképesztő mennyiségű kutatást végzett minden, ma már természetesnek tűnő dolog történetéről az építészettől az elektromosságig, az ételek tartósításától a járványokig, a fűszerkereskedelemtől az Eiffel-toronyig, az abroncsos szoknyáktól a vécékig, és az őket megalkotó ragyogó, kreatív és gyakran különc emberi elmékről. És felfedezte, hogy bár mindennapi életünket nem tartjuk különösebben érdekfeszítőnek, minden ház minden sarkában rengeteg történelem, érdekesség és izgalom - sőt néha még egy kis veszély is - rejtőzik. A magánélet rövid története hétköznapi környezetünket veszi górcső alá. Bryson ugyanazzal az olthatatlan kíváncsisággal, remek humorral és mesteri történetszövéssel adja elő mondanivalóját, ami miatt előző műve, a Majdnem minden rövid története az elmúlt évtized egyik legtöbbet dicsért könyve lett.