The world’s most popular travel writer takes a humourous look at just what it means to be ‘American’, from the Pilgrim Fathers to the hamburger and beyond.
Made in America describes the history of the English language in America, by exploring the social and economic pressures driving its rapid departure from standard English.
There’s a dry statement if ever there was one, but if there were no more than that to Made in America, would we have chosen Mike McShane to read it? Of course not, but there is and we did.
That’s not to say Made in America doesn’t trace the development of American English. It does, from the Pilgrim Fathers’ need to find new vocabulary for new experiences right through to the twentieth century’s advertising-speak via Tom Paine’s Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, the War of Jenkins’ Ear and so on. Of course, the history of a language is also the history of its speakers, and Bill Bryson illuminates just what it means, and, indeed, all the many things it has meant over the course of four centuries, to be American.
So you want to know why we chose Mike McShane? Well, because, like Mr McShane himself, Made in America is generous, engaging, perceptive, vivid, wise and above all very, very funny. If you want to know more about Jenkin’s Ear, or why Mrs Stuyvesant Fish drove over her servant three times in the space of a few minutes, or even why we say ‘Gordon Bennett!’, you’ll just have to buy the tape.
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Bill Bryson's many books include, most recently ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ as well as ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything‘, ‘I'm a Stranger Here Myself’, ‘A walk in the Woods’, ‘Neither Here Nor There’, ‘Made in America’, and ‘Notes from a Small Island’. He edited ‘The Best American Travel Writing 2000’. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, he now lives in Norfolk with his wife and four children.
Bill Bryson describes the history and development of the English language in America by exploring the social context in which the language was formed. Beginning with the arrival of the first settlers, who had to create a fresh vocabulary to define the strange new environment in which they found themselves, he traces the history of the American people over four centuries and charts the emergence of a distinctive American idiom. Painting vivid portraits of those who helped to shape both events and the language, and also dispelling many myths and misconceptions along the way, Bill Bryson offers a witty and perceptive account of just what it means to be 'American'.
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EUR 13,99
Da: Regno Unito a: Italia
Descrizione libro Audio Book (Cassette). Condizione: Good ++. Abridged Edition. ABRIDGED. Two audio cassette tapes which run well. Scratched case. Running time 3 hours. Codice articolo 720251