di Mark Worden
Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe (Standard British accent)
For many people Bill Bryson is a favourite writer. This is because of his ability to be interesting and amusing at the same time, whatever the subject. And the subjects are many: travel (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America), memoirs (The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid), language (Made in America), science (A Short History of Nearly Everything) and social history (At Home: A Short History of Private Life). And history is the theme of his latest book, One Summer America 1927 (Doubleday). Bryson believes that 1927 was a key year in the USA, thanks to Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, Babe Ruth and the birth of talking pictures, to name but a few.