BILL BRYSON - THE LOST CONTINENT - TRAVELS IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA - BLACK SWAN 1999 SOFTBACK

After living for ten years in England, Bill Bryson returned to America, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical town called Amalgam -- the kind of smiling village where the films of his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Dead Squaw, Coma, Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a look-alike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He found a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

Black Swan 1999 softback, well-binded, clean text pages, few soft small yellow marks mostly to end pages, 350 pages.