I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away [B1838]

1999 PB in nice clean condition. A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens-as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "One of my favorite Bill Bryson's. Always makes me laugh out loud, just a happy book!"; "This book is a collection of articles he wrote about the US for a British publication. The stories are cute, funny and a quick read."; "Nice to read one chapter at a time and a different book in between or it gets to be too much. He is funny but becomes a bit predictable."; "I'll take any opportunity I can get to commiserate about the insanity of America , and Bill Bryson manages to perfectly capture it in three years worth of magazine columns."