Product Description

Bill Bryson, who gave glorious voice to The Mother Tongue, now celebrates her magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and exactly why Mr.Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap "Macaroni."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12105 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Released on: 1996-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780380713813
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Readers from Toad Suck, Arkansas, to Idiotsville, Oregon--and everywhere in between--will love Made in America, Bill Bryson's Informal History of the English Language in the United States. It is, in a word, fascinating. After reading this tour de force, it's clear that a nation's language speaks volumes about its true character: you are what you speak. Bryson traces America's history through the language of the time, then goes on to discuss words culled from everyday activities: immigration, eating, shopping, advertising, going to the movies, and others.

Made in America will supply you with interesting facts and cocktail chatter for a year or more. Did you know, for example, that Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" credo has its roots in a West African proverb? Or that actor Walter Matthau's given name is Walter Mattaschanskayasky? Or that the supposedly frigid Puritans--who called themselves "Saints," by the way--had something called a pre-contract, which was a license for premarital sex? Made in America is an excellent discussion of American English, but what makes the book such a treasure is that it offers much, much more.

From Publishers Weekly
Bryson offers a playfully anecdotal account of the etymology of distinctive words and phrases that help to create a distinctly American English.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Journalist Bryson (Mother Tongue, Morrow, 1990) presents an engagingly written chronological history of the United States, focusing on popular culture and language. Along the way, he attempts to explain why American English is the way it is-why Americans paint the town red, talk turkey, keep a stiff upper lip, etc. He puts individual words and expressions in their social context as well as presenting well-researched and thoughtful discussions of our discovery and colonization of the New World, the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, westward expansion, the age of invention and industrialization, modern politics and war, popular culture, and the current state of American English. This is a page-turning trip across linguistic America that takes many deliciously discursive side trips. For Bryson's wonderfully sane and reasoned discussion of the issues surrounding "politically correct" language alone, this book is a worthwhile read. Highly recommended for collections large and small.
Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., Me.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Makes American history & language interesting
Having read Bryson's The Mother Tongue several years ago, I was delighted to find Made in America was going to explore the American variety of English with much the same humor and insight. As a teacher of both British and American literature, I've always tried to include a brief foray into the development of our language on both sides of the Atlantic. I have been able to spice up an otherwise pretty solid lecture presentation with Bryson's witty tidbits and elevate it to the level of the captivating (in my opinion, of course). Next year, I plan on assigning Made in America to my single honors American literature class; I have this suspicion that they will learn more lasting American history from this book than their regular text. When I had read a couple of chapters of the book, I bought an additional copy and sent it to my son, a history major at Notre Dame, who is currently studying in London. He called a few weeks later and was brimming with enthusiasm for the book and told me that he had not only finished it (before I had) but also that he was making all of his friends read it. His roommate read it in two days! I heartily recommend Made in America to anyone who is interested in food, travel, health, movies, history, or just about anything else. If all history and language texts were written with Bryson's flair for the interesting, our task as teachers would be significantly eased.
This last section is added in August 2004: I did, indeed, use the book with my junior class in my last year of teaching in Ohio before "retiring" and moving to Tennessee. It was very well received by the advanced readers and less so by those for whom any book assignment is, well, an assignment. Nonetheless, I'm back teaching in TN and am considering using the book again this second semester. (D.R. Powell at Hendersonville HS-since I didn't intend to make the original review anonymous)

An English Language book for the rest of us!
I'm not a student of the English language, though the history of words does interest me, therefore I've tried to read William Safire's books but with little success. I picked up this book only because of Bill Bryson. The book is not what you think, "An Informal History," describes the book exactly. Bryson fills the book with more historical antidotes than a formal study of the English language in the United States.

Bryson takes you along for a history of the United States and how our language has changed from English into its current form today. The other half of the book contains chapters dealing with specific topics such as names, the movies and cooking. Each of the subjects deals with the words and phases that entered the language at the time or involving the subject.

There are some reviews that question Bryson's accuracy on some of the items, and this book is not filled with Bryson's usual humor, but the writing is enjoyable with just the right amount of wit throughout. Make sure you check out the chapter dealing with Puritan morality!

Thoroughly enjoyable
After reading "The Lost Continent," Bryson's often whining and largely overrated travelogue on small-town America, I hesitated before picking this one up. However, this is a very enjoyable book. Ostensibly a study of American English, its development and impact on the English language in general, this book is more of a compendium of linguistic facts and historical trivia that cover the entire scope of U.S. history from the colonial period to the present. Bryson quite unabashedly plunders the works of historians, other scholars and writers who dealt with the same subjects, so what he offers here is hardly new. But the presentation and organization are impeccable. While informing us of the origins of many words and expressions common to American English, he also provides a wealth of particularly useful information on things like American cuisine or the origins of America's highway system and car culture (one of my only criticisms is that he failed to mention the origin of quintessential car-related Americanisms like "rumble seat" or "to ride shotgun"). Bryson's engaging writing style and dry humor keep the book moving, so it is never dull and always very amusing - it seriously lives up to that old cliché about how learning can be fun.