The Lost Continent

After ten years in England, expatriate American Bill Bryson returned to the land of his youth. He travelled 13,978 miles through thirty-eight states, seeing pretty much what he wanted to see, and a good deal that he didn't. This book is at once a portrait of contemporary America and memoir of lost youth.

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After ten years in England, expatriate American Bill Bryson was gripped by an urge to return to the land of his youth. Borrowing his mother's old Chevrolet, Bryson travelled 13,978 miles through thirty-eight states, seeing pretty much what he wanted to see, and a good deal that he didn't. He visited Mark Twain's birthplace and the place where Roosevelt died. He glimpsed the Grand Canyon through a thick fog and failed to find the giant Californian Sequoia you can drive through. At once a savagely funny portrait of contemporary America and a poignant memoir of lost youth, "The Lost Continent" is a comic masterpiece.