Made in America

The world’s most popular travel writer takes a humourous look at just what it means to be ‘American’, from the Pilgrim Fathers to the hamburger and beyond.


Made in America describes the history of the English language in America, by exploring the social and economic pressures driving its rapid departure from standard English.


There’s a dry statement if ever there was one, but if there were no more than that to Made in America, would we have chosen Mike McShane to read it? Of course not, but there is and we did.


That’s not to say Made in America doesn’t trace the development of American English. It does, from the Pilgrim Fathers’ need to find new vocabulary for new experiences right through to the twentieth century’s advertising-speak via Tom Paine’s Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, the War of Jenkins’ Ear and so on. Of course, the history of a language is also the history of its speakers, and Bill Bryson illuminates just what it means, and, indeed, all the many things it has meant over the course of four centuries, to be American.


So you want to know why we chose Mike McShane? Well, because, like Mr McShane himself, Made in America is generous, engaging, perceptive, vivid, wise and above all very, very funny. If you want to know more about Jenkin’s Ear, or why Mrs Stuyvesant Fish drove over her servant three times in the space of a few minutes, or even why we say ‘Gordon Bennett!’, you’ll just have to buy the tape.