Book #52: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

I am a long-time fan of Bill Bryson, ever since I discovered him while I was in college. I've read maybe seven or eight of his books, although most of them were before I started this blog so I don't know if I've written about any of them here. So many of his observations and his writing style just make me laugh, and his writing is so easy to follow and always in such an accessible manner that I am always pleased with what I read from him. So when I saw that he'd written another book (whether this is that new or not, I am not sure), I put on my to-read list. And I was not disappointed!

One Summer is basically a look at everything that happened in America in the summer of 1927, and at the culture and lifestyle of Americans in the mid-twenties. There were a lot of really important historical events that went on at that time, namely and especially Charles Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic and Babe Ruth's home-run record. Bryson writes about the aviation race to be the first pilot across the Atlantic and all the different people who were hoping to do that, and it was mind-blowing to learn about the worldwide reaction to that and how Lindberg was received after that (literally mobbed by people for years). And he details lots of other lesser-known but also fascinating events that went on that summer, like several tabloid sensational court cases, major flooding across the Midwest, and the first "talkie" movie with sound. Bryson has a very strong sense of the absurd, and peppers all of these random tales about very tangential people that add a lot of hilarious asides. All of those events that went on give you a really good look into what it was really like to be living back then in that time and how cultural perceptions of "normal" have changed. This was really a fascinating read--I do love historical stuff.