I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to'. & 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 & drove almost 14 000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam the kind of trim & sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead his search led him to Anywhere USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations motels & hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states
- united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity
- he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed pollution mobile homes & television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own l&. The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature
- hilariously stomach-achingly funny yet tinged with heartache
- & the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.