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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
by: Bill Bryson

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Binding: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4092
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: October 17, 2006
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: October 17, 2006
Sales Rank: 1406
Studio: Broadway

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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 middle of the United States in the middle of the last century. A book that delivers on the promise that it is “laugh-out-loud funny.”

Some say that the first hints that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came from his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman.

Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird and wonderful world of 1950s America. He modestly claims that this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting much larger slowly. But for the rest of us, it is a laugh-out-loud book that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Funny but audio version not helped by author's voice
I listened to the audio version, narrated by the author. Bryson is a great humorist but not a great narrator. His voice is soft and has an unusual accent, most likely due to his having lived in England for most of his adult life. Still, I recommend the book if you are a baby boomer in a nostalgic mood. Bryson gives a very humorous picture of growing up in the fifties.

Rating:

- The Thunderbolt Kid
What an enjoyable read. Brought back all the wonderful memories of childhood along with an adult slant about the world today. Every chapter a treat.

Rating:

- Did He Mistakenly Combine Two Different Books?
I have read several of Bryson's books, the most recent being his able essay on Shakespeare, but this one I found almost disturbing. The book is supposedly about growing up in Des Moines (Bryson was born in 1951) and part of the book is about that. But lots is not. There are hypercritical and one sided rants on US policy in the Cold War, on the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950's and a number of other aspects of life in the 1950's of which Bryson disapproves. Now some of these things are pretty soft targets and deserve some measure of abuse, but the rants are not relating the experience of the very young boy who experienced the times. They are the views of an adult evaluating the times and an angry adult at that.

Some of the parts that are about growing up in Des Moines are fairly funny, but they are just as frequently nasty and are often fueled by anger as well. Bryson is thoroughly unkind to many ... Read More

Rating:

- Way funnier than Beaver Cleaver ever was
As a kid growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, I totally related to Bill Bryson's recounting of his childhood in Iowa. He did all sorts of stuff kids today would never get away with - their mothers would be horrified. Of course, much of his recollections are exaggerated, but not so much so that they don't ring true to those who grew up in that post WWII era.

Bryson's knack for creatively recounting minor incidents from his life - like working on a scab for months, until it was 1 1/2 inches thick and you could stick a thumbtack in it and not feel a thing - had me laughing out loud again and again. His imagination turns a day at the beach, or dinner and a movie with his mom, into one hilarious event after another. His was an era where getting stitches more than once was not only common but a measurement of bravery...or guts.

I highly recommend this entertaining, feel-good, laugh-till ... Read More

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