Phillip Torbert

Bryson returns to form, hilarious and heartwarming anew. You'll enjoy the long-winded retelling of his parents' explanations about how to live life in 1950s Des Moines, along with informative discussions about how to break into a vending machine without getting caught, and how not to construct an improvised explosive device to get out of school.

If the Discovery Channel was a book...look no further.

A searing look at family values in America. Along the same lines as American Beauty, but much more masterful in its scope and depth.

Calling all anglophiles...read the opening chapter about how the distance Americans drive for a taco represents a journey of enormous undertaking for most English countryside folk.

Great travelogue of Australia. I actually couldn't breathe at one point I was laughing so hard after an episode in a park in greater Sidney. Bryson gets a little bogged down in some of the more remote areas of the country and the belly-laughs don't roll as quickly as in some of his other works (notably “A Walk in the Woods”), but on the whole an immensely entertaining and informative Australian journey. You'll learn things you never even though to ask about the country. And just as quickly forget most of them, as does the author.

Another Discovery-Channel-in-a-book from Bryson. Fascinating tome of how American English has become the way it is today.

Read this on my Bryson kick...not his best, but an entertaining and mildly informative if not blatantly nostalgic read about small-town, mostly midwestern, America.

If you enjoyed Harry Potter and Narnia (and the like), but long for a more complex plot, deeper magic, and a more fantastical journey, you'll very much enjoy the first book in Philip Pullman's “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Great read.

Engrossing story about the real ship Essex on which Moby Dick was based. Incredibly researched and well-written.