Bill Bryson

NYS Writers Institute, October 5, 2013
7:30 p.m. Reading | Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Downtown Albany

Parking at the Museum and Empire State Plaza:
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/locpar_ce.htm and http://www.ogs.ny.gov/ESP/docs/787DunnBridge.pdf

CALENDAR LISTING:
Bill Bryson, one of the best-loved nonfiction writers in the English-speaking world, will present his new book, One Summer: America, 1927 (2013), the story of a pivotal year in America’s national “coming of age,” on Saturday, October 5, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. in the Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, in downtown Albany. The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, the New York State Library, and Friends of the New York State Library.

PROFILE
Bill Bryson is one of the best-loved nonfiction writers in the English-speaking world. Laugh-out-loud funny and astonishingly scholarly, Bryson’s many books on travel, history, science, culture, and the English language have earned him a large following of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Born and raised in Iowa, Bryson has spent much of his adult life in England, where he was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his contributions to British arts and letters. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and served as Chancellor of Durham University, England’s third oldest university, from 2005 to 2011.

Bryson’s new book, One Summer: America, 1927 (2013), tells the story of a pivotal time in America’s national “coming of age,” when media spectacles became the country’s obsession. The book features a large cast of colorful characters including celebrity “flyboy” Charles Lindbergh, homerun king Babe Ruth, husband-killer Ruth Snyder, flagpole sitter Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, gangster Al Capone, jazz singer Al Jolson, do-nothing president Calvin Coolidge, and Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum. In a starred review, Booklist called it, “Glorious,” and said, “Bryson offers delicious detail and breathtaking suspense about events whose outcomes are already known.” Kirkus called it, “A distinctively drawn time capsule from a definitive epoch.”

Bryson’s most recent book was the international bestseller, At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010), an epic chronicle of innovations in domestic architecture, from bathrooms to kitchens. The New York Times Book Review called it “Delightful…,” and said, “Bryson’s enthusiasm brightens any dull corner… He is fascinated by everything, and his curiosity is infectious.” People magazine said, “If this book doesn’t supply you with five years’ worth of dinner conversation, you’re not paying attention.” The book will be reissued shortly in a new illustrated edition featuring more than 300 drawings and photographs.

Bryson’s bestselling travel books include Bill Bryson’s African Diary (2002), about visits to humanitarian projects sponsored by CARE International (which received all proceeds); In a Sunburned Country (2000), about Australia; A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998); Notes from a Small Island (1995), about Great Britain; and The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989). Notes from a Small Island was voted the book that best represented Great Britain in a 2003 poll of BBC radio listeners. The New York Times Book Review said of A Walk in theWoods, “Bryson is...great company right from the start—a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and...Dave Barry…. a satirist of the first rank, who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio.”

Bryson’s book on the history of science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, earned the Royal Society’s Aventis Prize, as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union’s highest literary award. His books on English language and literature include Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007), Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002), Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994), and The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990).