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Bill Bryson
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Troublesome Words
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Penguin Group Издательство: Penguin Group Год: 2010 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 27 апреля 20142011-12-30
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What is the difference between mean and median, blatant and flagrant, flout and flaunt? Is it whodunnit or whodunit? Do you know? Are you sure? With Troublesome Words, journalist and bestselling travel-writer Bill Bryson gives us a clear, concise and entertaining guide to the problems of English usage and spelling that has been an indispensable companion to those who work with the written word for over twenty years. So if you want to discover whether you should care about split infinitives, are cursed with an uncontrollable outbreak of commas or were wondering if that newsreader was right to say 'an historic day', this superb book is the place to find out.
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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2007 Страниц: 416 Дата загрузки: 04 июля 20082009-07-11
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Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman. Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’ In his deeply funny new memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, and the curious world of 1950s America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about growing up in a specific time and place. But in Bryson’s hands, it becomes everyone’s story, one that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.
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Made In America
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1998 Страниц: 496 Дата загрузки: 28 июня 20092002-03-26
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An entertaining, anecdotal look at the origins of language and ideas in the USA. Bryson explains why two bicycle repairmen from Ohio succeeded in mastering manned flight, why the assassination of President Garfield led to the invention of air conditioning, and many other improbable but true facts.
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Neither Here, Nor There
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1998 Страниц: 304 Дата загрузки: 15 июля 20092000-07-11
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In «Neither Here nor There» Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.
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Notes From A Big Country
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1999 Страниц: 448 Дата загрузки: 13 августа 20092003-03-22
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Des Moines, Iowa born writer Bryson's first success was the travel book «The Lost Continent». After living in England for several years, he wanted to go back to the USA to find the perfect little US town of his past, he lovingly called Amalgam. More travel books followed, in the form of «Neither Here Nor There» (where he travels through Europe), «Notes From A Small Island» (where he travels around the United Kingdom, before returning back with his to the USA to live there for good) and «A Walk In The Woods» (where he walks the Appalachian trail). After moving back to the States, Bryson started to write a column for «The Mail on Sunday Night and Day» magazine. This is a collection of these column entries. Bryson writes about everything from everyday chores, to sueing people, the beach, TV, movies, air conditioners, college, Americana, injury dangers, wasting resources and holiday seasons.
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Notes From A Small Island
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1996 Страниц: 259 Дата загрузки: 10 октрября 20091998-05-12
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After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such bestsellers as «The Mother Tongue» and «Made in America», decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland — and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him. But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of modern-day Britain, and to analyze what he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings, and place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey, and Shellow Bowells. With wit and irreverence, Bill Bryson presents the ludicrous and the endearing in equal measure. The result is a social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain.
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A Walk In The Woods
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1998 Страниц: 350 Дата загрузки: 20 декабря 20092000-05-12
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From the author of «Notes from a Small Island» and «The Lost Continent» comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail is the longest continuous footpath in the world, and it snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in America.
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Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2008 Страниц: 416 Дата загрузки: 05 июня 20102009-06-11
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From one of America's most beloved and bestselling authors, a wonderfully useful and readable guide to the problems of the English language most commonly encountered by editors and writers. What is the difference between “immanent” and “imminent”? What is the singular form of graffiti? What is the difference between “acute” and “chronic”? What is the former name of “Moldova”? What is the difference between a cardinal number and an ordinal number? One of the English language's most skilled writers answers these and many other questions and guides us all toward precise, mistake-free usage. Covering spelling, capitalization, plurals, hyphens, abbreviations, and foreign names and phrases, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors will be an indispensable companion for all who care enough about our language not to maul, misuse, or contort it. This dictionary is an essential guide to the wonderfully disordered thing that is the English language. As Bill Bryson notes, it will provide you with “the answers to all those points of written usage that you kind of know or ought to know but can’t quite remember”.
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Bill Bryson African Diary
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2002 Страниц: 64 Дата загрузки: 10 декабря 20092004-10-27
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Bill Bryson goes to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. Kenya, generally regarded as the cradle of mankind, is a land of contrasts, with famous game reserves, stunning landscapes, and a vibrant cultural tradition. It also provides plenty to worry a traveller like Bill Bryson, fixated as he is on the dangers posed by snakes, insects and large predators. But on a more sober note, it is a country that shares many serious human and environmental problems with the rest of Africa: refugees, AIDS, drought and grinding poverty. Travelling around the country, Bryson casts his inimitable eye on a continent new to him, and the resultant diary, though short in length, contains the trademark Bryson stamp of wry observation and curious insight. All the author's royalties from «Bill Bryson's African Diary», as well as all profits, will go to CARE International.
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The Lost Continent
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 1999 Страниц: 416 Дата загрузки: 16 марта 20092002-04-27
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'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states — united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity — he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature — hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache — and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.
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Bryson's Dictionary: for Writers and Editors
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2009 Страниц: 464 Дата загрузки: 26 февраля 20112013-03-16
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What is the difference between cant and jargon, or assume and presume? What is a fandango? How do you spell supersede? Is it hippy or hippie? These questions really matter to Bill Bryson, as they do to anyone who cares about the English language. Originally published as «The Penguin Dictionary for Writers and Editors», «Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors» has now been completely revised and updated for the twenty-first century by Bill Bryson himself. Here is a very personal selection of spellings and usages, covering such head-scratchers as capitalization, plurals, abbreviations and foreign names and phrases. Bryson also gives us the difference between British and American usages, and miscellaneous pieces of essential information you never knew you needed, like the names of all the Oxford colleges, or the correct spelling of Brobdingnag. An indispensable companion to all those who write, work with the written word, or who just enjoy getting things right, it gives rulings that are both authoritative and commonsense, all in Bryson's own inimitably goodhumoured way.
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A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2006 Страниц: 416 Дата загрузки: 03 августа 20082008-07-11
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God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath — The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, «A Walk in the Woods» will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.
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Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Penguin Group Издательство: Penguin Group Год: 2009 Страниц: 288 Дата загрузки: 14 сентября 20142011-10-23
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'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...' Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use. Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.
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Icons of England
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2010 Страниц: 368 Дата загрузки: 10 сентября 20152011-06-25
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This is a hymn to what makes England, especially the English countryside, so special, in a collection of passionate, eclectic and thought-provoking pieces. It includes Bill Bryson on seaside piers, Michael Palin on crags, Eric Clapton on Newlands Corner, Bryan Ferry on Penshaw Monument, Sebastian Faulks on pub signs, Kate Adie on deer parks, Kevin Spacey on canal boats, Gavin Pretor-Pinney on clouds, Richard Mabey on marshland, Simon Jenkins on English country houses, John Sergeant on Great Tew, Benjamin Zephaniah on the Malvern Hills, Joan Bakewell on estuaries, Antony Beevor on the north downs in Kent, Libby Purves on Harbour Walls, Jonathan Dimbleby on the beach at West Wittering, and many more.
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I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2008 Страниц: 304 Дата загрузки: 16 февраля 20102010-10-13
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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.
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A Really Short History of Nearly Everything
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Random House Inc. Издательство: Random House, Inc. Год: 2010 Страниц: 176 Дата загрузки: 12 апреля 20142013-04-25
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Suitable for younger readers, this book covers the wonder and mysteries of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, and the extraordinary accidental discoveries which suddenly advanced whole areas of science when the people were actually looking for something else (or in the wrong direction).
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Shakespeare: The World as a Stage
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Daedalus Books Издательство: Daedalus Books Год: 2009 Страниц: 256 Дата загрузки: 26 мая 20122010-12-30
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This exquisitely illustrated edition of Bill Bryson's best-selling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling guide through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship. Bill Bryson's Shakespeare pairs our most celebrated writer in history with one of the most cherished writers in the English language today. In this elegant new illustrated edition, the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright are evoked through a series of full-colour paintings, drawings, portraits, documents and photographs. Bryson also includes the recent discoveries of the Cobbe portrait and the remains of Shakespeare's first theatre in Shoreditch. Examining centuries of myths, half-truths and downright lies, Bryson — with his inimitable wit and intelligence — has attempted to make sense of the man behind the masterpieces. In a journey through the streets of Shakespeare's time, he brings to life the hubbub of Elizabethan England and a host of characters along the way. Bryson celebrates the glory of Shakespeare's language — his ceaseless inventiveness gave us hundreds of now indispensable phrases, images and words — and delights in details of his fall-outs and folios, poetry and plays.
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The Complete Notes
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2010 Страниц: 544 Дата загрузки: 23 декабря 20122015-08-03
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This work combines two of Bill Bryson's best-loved books and demonstrates his take on life — from either side of the pond. The books, «Notes from a Small Island» and «Notes From a Big Country», went on to become major bestsellers. «The Complete Notes» combines these two popular books into one volume. Written in the form of bite-sized essays, both books are gently humorous as they highlight the idiosyncracies of the USA and Great Britain.
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At Home
Автор: Bill Bryson Жанр: Transworld Publishers Издательство: Transworld Publishers Год: 2011 Страниц: 259 Дата загрузки: 12 марта 20142013-07-14
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In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business — eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live.This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and on the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. And he discovered that, although there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement — and even a little danger — lurking in the corners of every home.
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