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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

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.

Average Customer Rating:

Did He Mistakenly Combine Two Different Books?

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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 of the people that he describes in the book. The funny parts were not enough to me to counterbalance the nasty. Overall the book reeks of an arrogant superiority that I have not found in other Bryson books. His other books did not seem to me to be mean spirited. This one does.

Way funnier than Beaver Cleaver ever was

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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-you-cry (complete with tears) experience, a baby boomer's delight and worthy of your time. 50 Ways to Leave Your Mother

Enjoyable but lighter than I expected.	Customer Rating:
Lots of great research (At least I can't remember that many details of my childhood from the same time period.) Not as good as the raving reviews but interesting and easy reading.

Well worn territory but still very good

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50's nostalgia has been done over and over, but Bill Bryson hits a home run with this reminiscence of his childhood years in Des Moines, Iowa. Despite the efforts of modern novelists and Hollywood to cast a dark shadow over the decade of the 50's, it does truly seem like it was the best of times after reading this book. Being a "late boomer", born almost a decade after Bryson, I grew up with some remnants of this world myself, and I can personally vouch for the mayhem inside those movie theatres that showed Saturday matinees for the kids. If there's one chapter that made me laugh out loud it was the one entitled "Out and About". The theatres, the amusement park, the restaurants, the Iowa State Fair, hanging around a downtown full of stores, all of these places had stories which Bryson delights in sharing with us. The author describes Iowa as an idyllic place; smack dab in the middle of the country, with deep topsoil, huge stalks of corn, and frugal yet welcoming people who didn't worry too much about things they couldn't control. The world was a much bigger place then, and food items which seem pretty basic to us, such as "pasta, rice, cream cheese, sour cream, garlic, mayonnaise, onions.." etc. were somewhat exotic and to be viewed with suspicion back then. Those of us who have received a much circulated e-mail about how things were different in our childhood, how we could be outside at all hours of the day and didn't flinch at the cuts and scrapes we acquired on a daily basis, will get more reminding by reading this book. Even childhood mischief is portrayed somewhat benignly as Bryson looks through the haze of nostalgia; chemistry sets setting houses on fire, petty thefts of beer and candy, and dangerous practices like hanging off the back of tailgates of moving cars. Not to mention the threat of the polio epidemic of the time, one wonders in today's age of over-supervised kids how we ever survived our own 50's and 60's childhoods. Bryson looks at the 50's in the greater world as well, sometimes in a way that works, sometimes not. Bryson is at his best when talking about phenomena like comic books and TV becoming so big, and about publications of all kinds predicting various Doomsday scenarios (much like today actually). The chapter on the Red Scare doesn't fit too well into this book though, a bit of liberal preachiness creeps in that seems out of place here. There are parts where it seems as if Bryson might be trying too hard to amuse us, but overall I enjoyed this book very much. His affection for his sportswriter father and absent-minded yet cheery mother are quite heartwarming. The chapter about his rural grandparent's home was drawn very nicely as well. Bryson does the inevitable comparison between the Des Moines of his childhood and today and sees all that was lost, never to return. Was the world a better place back then? Bryson implies strongly that it was, and I won't disagree. For those fans of Bryson's books, or for those who are drawn to nostalgic remembrances, you will enjoy this.

He wrote my story!

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I was very fortunate to grow up in this period in a small town. It was amazing that the kids in Iowa were doing the SAME dumb stuff as we did in Texas. I had the electric football game and never could figure out how to have fun with it. We went to the local fair and got into the stripper tent at age 15 (true). The stripper in Texas was probably on a circuit that went to Iowa. All in all, a fun book to read for anyone of that era. All the buildings are now gone, but the memories still remain. Bill did a great job bringing those back to life.