One Summer

A gripping slice of history with all sorts of reverberant echoes of today...Bryson, the travel writer turned non-fiction impresario, has now invented what may be an entirely new genre of non-fiction: the brief history of an era told through the biography of a summer.

Matt Ridley, The Times

Bryson is a master of the sidelong, a man who can turn obscurity into hilarity with seemingly effortless charm - and One Summer: America 1927 is an entertaining addition to a body of work that is at its best when it celebrates the unexpected and the obscure...a jolly jalopy ride of a book; Bryson runs down the byways of American history and finds diversion in every roadside stop.

Erica Wagner, Financial Times

Few writers of nonfiction, and,let's be honest,few enough writers of novels, can crack the narrative whip like Bryson. One Summer fairly whirls along...full of exhilarating, fact-filled fun...surely the most sublime distraction published this year.

Observer

A fascinating snapshot of a season during which America, for better or worse, ushered in the modern world.

Sunday Times

Bill Bryson is a true master of popular narrative. Over the course of his career, he has bestowed a beautiful clarity on even the most recondite of subjects...Has history ever been so enjoyable?

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

A gifted raconteur...The book is filled with eccentric, flamboyant characters and memorable stories...highly amusing.

Guardian

This splendid book, written in the breezy and humorous style that has come to be Bryson's trademark, is sure to delight.

Huffington Post

Has captured the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties in this entertaining and informative book.

Washington Post

Another winner...witty and engrossing.

Irish Independent

Immaculately researched and lit up by [Bill Bryson's] marvellous anecdotal and descriptive skills.

Literary Review

Wry but scholarly infotainment...One Summer wins you over by the sheer weight of its encylopedic enthusiasms...Bryson's winning love of the ridiculous finds a rich seam in charting the rise and fall of America's great men...there is tumultuous energy in this serio-hilarious fan letter. In short, it's a bit like America itself.

Sunday Telegraph

Bryson writes in a style as effervescent as the time itself...No one is immune to Bryson's irreverence...a wonderful romp.

New York Times

Exuberant...he propels his story forward with enviable skill and inexhaustible verve...Byson's summer of 1927 seems like a boisterous American version of the British summerof 1913, another high point of that fabled innocence which America was always doomed to lose.

Elaine Showalter, TLS

A great new form of literature: biography of a few months in one country.

Matt Ridley, The Times (Books of the Year)

The T&Cs of a bank loan could be made eloquent in the hands of Bryson so with this rich material, the book sings.

The Times Saturday Review Books of the Year

A wonderful book on a pivotal year, in which the gravitational pull of the world shifted from Europe to America.

Mail on Sunday

A wonderful book on a pivotal year, in which the gravitational pull of the world shifted from Europe to America.

Mail on Sunday (Books of the Year)