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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Bill Bryson
From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s
5 Spot
October 2006
On Sale: October 17, 2006
ISBN: 076791936X
EAN: 9780767919364
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Memoir
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."
Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson
re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the
1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once
completely familiar to us all and as far away and
unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a
happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances
(not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more
numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and
the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered
harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of
his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate
portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local
paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and
OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for
the same paper left her little time for practicing the
domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s
earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the
reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz,
seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined
in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the
demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their
scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully
destructive ends.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny,
and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations,
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as
wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will
enchant anyone who has ever been young.
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