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Bill BrysonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Bill Bryson is the author of numerous books, including The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990); A Walk in the Woods (1998); and A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003). He announced his retirement from writing in 2020, though he subsequently released an audiobook. Bryson’s style typically employs humor to highlight his personal observations and journalistic explorations. In Notes from a Small Island, Bryson travels across the island of Great Britain, a place where he is both an insider (he has lived there for 20 years at the time of writing) and an outsider (he is American by birth). This offers him a unique perspective on the cultural traditions and deeply layered history of his adoptive nation. After the publication of Notes from a Small Island, he eventually became a dual citizen of the US and England, honored with the Order of the British Empire in 2006.
The book also functions as a kind of bildungsroman, retracing Bryson’s first forays into England and into his career in journalism. As Bryson recalls his first night in Dover, sleeping on a bench near the harbor, he remembers himself as “a young man with more on his mind than in it” (8).
By Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson
One Summer: America, 1927
Bill Bryson
The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Bill Bryson
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson
The Lost Continent
Bill Bryson
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
Bill Bryson