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Title: Made in America by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0-380-71381-0 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (42 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Comment: After reading "The Lost Continent," Bryson's often whining and largely overrated travelogue on small-town America, I hesitated before picking this one up. However, this is a very enjoyable book. Ostensibly a study of American English, its development and impact on the English language in general, this book is more of a compendium of linguistic facts and historical trivia that cover the entire scope of U.S. history from the colonial period to the present. Bryson quite unabashedly plunders the works of historians, other scholars and writers who dealt with the same subjects, so what he offers here is hardly new. But the presentation and organization are impeccable. While informing us of the origins of many words and expressions common to American English, he also provides a wealth of particularly useful information on things like American cuisine or the origins of America's highway system and car culture (one of my only criticisms is that he failed to mention the origin of quintessential car-related Americanisms like "rumble seat" or "to ride shotgun"). Bryson's engaging writing style and dry humor keep the book moving, so it is never dull and always very amusing - it seriously lives up to that old cliché about how learning can be fun.
Rating: 4
Summary: thoroughly enjoyable, but keep the word 'informal' in mind.
Comment: Bill Bryson's book, "Made in America", is thoroughly enjoyable on many levels. First, he blithely debunks many of our folk legends - legends which we learn as schoolchildren and carry with us through life as if they were fact. Things like: the Puritans actually landing on Plymouth Rock; the ringing of the Liberty Bell on independence day; Patrick Henry's famous death-defying words about liberty or death, just to name a few. If these anecdotes are as true as he claims, then our school history textbooks seem canned and artificial by comparison.
Second, by saying aloud the early American pronunciations that Bryson describes, the reader can clearly grasp how 18th century colonists sounded in speech.
Third, Bryson's wry style gives the reader a good laugh on just about every page - a comparable textbook on early American language would never do that.
However, it's very important to keep in mind the word 'informal' in the book title. Several geographical errors in the 'Names' chapter led me to realize the potential number of inaccuracies in such a thick book. For instance, in that chapter he mentions the towns of Ipswich and Agawam as being quite close to each other in Connecticut. In fact, the two towns are in Massachusetts, on opposite sides of the state. One quick glance in an atlas by Bryson's editor would have cleared that up.
So read this enjoyable book for its humorous take on history, and not as a scholarly work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great recovery from the "Mother Tongue"
Comment: I almost lost hope after the awful "Mother Tongue", a sort of "English Language For Dummies." And indeed, it appears written by a dummy considering the number of obvious errors found between its covers. But in MADE IN AMERICA Bryson is back with a vengeance and has restored my flagging confidence.
As is true with most of his books, it is more than it appears. It is the story of America with all its quirks, hidden history and unknown facts. Some are uneasy with the new tales we learn here but when one recognizes that ALL peoples the world around strive to present to the world their best face, it is totally understandable. The same thing goes on today. We do not want to hear of Clinton's everyday obscenity-laced tirades against enemies not of Bush's prediliction to waving his hand and accepting whatever is suggested. No, we prefer a "good economy and wise leadership." We want the story, not the facts.
He begins at the beginning noting how from the very start, we chose to be different than our colonial masters. We developed a way of speaking that was "American". If, as some scientists have predicted, the two forms of English continue to separate, American English may replace the mother tongue.
Bryson is full of little-known facts (some disputable) but one of his main thesis is that despite the size of the continent our own brand became more uniform within a few years than that spoken in the small mother country today. We made learning and speaking a uniform English a second religion. He notes that our incredible industrial energies produced inventions and new names which continues today. The book not only looks at the history of the tongue but at specific areas (entertainment, politics, commerce, religion) in which wehave produced our own peculiar speech. All in all a delightful read.
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Title: The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0380715430 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 September, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0060920084 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 12 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0767908171 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson ISBN: 076790382X Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 06 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0380713802 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 06 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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