Rating: 
Summary: Oustanding, interesting, educating book.
Review: "Made in America" by Bill Bryson is the authoritative source on "American English". It not only explains how it differs from standard English, but it explains where words, phrases and the overall language came from. Ever wonder why we say "backwater town" or "the real McCoy"? Mr. Bryson explains it all with a sense of humor that makes reading this book such a joy.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Learning is fun...
Review: An enjoyable book about the origins of words in the United States. Bryson's style is entertaining, and this does not read like a scholarly book (which it really is!). There's so much information here, starting with the arrival of Pilgrims on the Mayflower to modern times. I really liked this book, and learned a lot, without being bored in the process. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, but not the whole story...
Review: Bill Bryson is always entertaining, which is the main goal behind his writing. He is also somewhat of a rarity, being an American who understands irony in its many forms. However, if you want the whole story of American English I would suggest the book "The Story of English", which adopts a more scholarly approach but is really quite gripping!
Rating: 
Summary: A trivia book that tries to pretend it is a history lesson
Review: Bill Bryson once again writes a book that is supposed to be funny but just isn't. In Made in America he apparently tries take selected historical events in American History and then dig for any negative information about it that he can find. The only person he had anything good to say about was Benjamin Franklin.There are a few slightly amusing facts about word origins and advertising. But for the most part it is just a bunch of negative trivia.
Rating:
Summary: thoroughly enjoyable, but keep the word 'informal' in mind.
Review: Bill Bryson's book, "Made in America", is thoroughly enjoyable on many levels. First, he blithely debunks many of our folk legends - legends which we learn as schoolchildren and carry with us through life as if they were fact. Things like: the Puritans actually landing on Plymouth Rock; the ringing of the Liberty Bell on independence day; Patrick Henry's famous death-defying words about liberty or death, just to name a few. If these anecdotes are as true as he claims, then our school history textbooks seem canned and artificial by comparison.
Second, by saying aloud the early American pronunciations that Bryson describes, the reader can clearly grasp how 18th century colonists sounded in speech.
Third, Bryson's wry style gives the reader a good laugh on just about every page - a comparable textbook on early American language would never do that.
However, it's very important to keep in mind the word 'informal' in the book title. Several geographical errors in the 'Names' chapter led me to realize the potential number of inaccuracies in such a thick book. For instance, in that chapter he mentions the towns of Ipswich and Agawam as being quite close to each other in Connecticut. In fact, the two towns are in Massachusetts, on opposite sides of the state. One quick glance in an atlas by Bryson's editor would have cleared that up.
So read this enjoyable book for its humorous take on history, and not as a scholarly work.
Rating:
Summary: thoroughly enjoyable, but keep the word 'informal' in mind.
Review: Bill Bryson's book, "Made in America", is thoroughly enjoyable on many levels. First, he blithely debunks many of our folk legends - legends which we learn as schoolchildren and carry with us through life as if they were fact. Things like: the Puritans actually landing on Plymouth Rock; the ringing of the Liberty Bell on independence day; Patrick Henry's famous death-defying words about liberty or death, just to name a few. If these anecdotes are as true as he claims, then our school history textbooks seem canned and artificial by comparison.
Second, by saying aloud the early American pronunciations that Bryson describes, the reader can clearly grasp how 18th century colonists sounded in speech.
Third, Bryson's wry style gives the reader a good laugh on just about every page - a comparable textbook on early American language would never do that.
However, it's very important to keep in mind the word 'informal' in the book title. Several geographical errors in the 'Names' chapter led me to realize the potential number of inaccuracies in such a thick book. For instance, in that chapter he mentions the towns of Ipswich and Agawam as being quite close to each other in Connecticut. In fact, the two towns are in Massachusetts, on opposite sides of the state. One quick glance in an atlas by Bryson's editor would have cleared that up.
So read this enjoyable book for its humorous take on history, and not as a scholarly work.
Rating:
Summary: thoroughly enjoyable, but keep the word 'informal' in mind.
Review: Bill Bryson's book, "Made in America", is thoroughly enjoyable on many levels. First, he blithely debunks many of our folk legends - legends which we learn as schoolchildren and carry with us through life as if they were fact. Things like: the Puritans actually landing on Plymouth Rock; the ringing of the Liberty Bell on independence day; Patrick Henry's famous death-defying words about liberty or death, just to name a few. If these anecdotes are as true as he claims, then our school history textbooks seem canned and artificial by comparison.
Second, by saying aloud the early American pronunciations that Bryson describes, the reader can clearly grasp how 18th century colonists sounded in speech.
Third, Bryson's wry style gives the reader a good laugh on just about every page - a comparable textbook on early American language would never do that.
However, it's very important to keep in mind the word 'informal' in the book title. Several geographical errors in the 'Names' chapter led me to realize the potential number of inaccuracies in such a thick book. For instance, in that chapter he mentions the towns of Ipswich and Agawam as being quite close to each other in Connecticut. In fact, the two towns are in Massachusetts, on opposite sides of the state. One quick glance in an atlas by Bryson's editor would have cleared that up.
So read this enjoyable book for its humorous take on history, and not as a scholarly work.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, Addictive, Smart
Review: Bill Bryson's Made in America is a joy from start to finish. The only problem is that it may be slow reading as you will want to call all your friends after every page to say, "Did you know ..." (A brief warning: They will begin to be annoyed if you do this too often but just try and stop yourself). The book is more than an informal history of the English Language in the United States (as per the subtitle) as it covers all of American history, both political and social, in the author's delightful style. One story will lead into another and you will have forgotten where you began but the ride will always be worth it. Before your very eyes he will dispel many of the myths of America and build up America with some solid truths. An wonderfully funny and smart work.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateurish
Review: Bill Bryson's zest for life is made manifest in the books he's written on pretty much whatever catches his interest. This admirable quality has resulted in quite a lot of enjoyable reading, as he's educated himself on distant places, science, etymology and such, and produced books about them.
This one, sadly, is disappointing. It is a rote run-through of American history, of the "cherished myths debunked" school of history writing from the Sixties. He's read his Howard Zinn, and it shows. This dated approach is too, well, too dated to give the expected pleasure to this new Bryson fan.
Politics intrudes most in the final chapters. For instance, the pages on the Cold War could have been used to introduce a lot of useful terms, such as "peacenik", "peace offensive", and "red diaper baby." But the liberal Bryson instead renders the contest with Communism as an idiotic greedfest for big business, and dwells on military double-speak from the Vietnam war. More oddly, he defends the early 1990s wave of political correctness, and its assault on the language he professes to love. Tepid, euphemism-ridden, colorless, and self-pitying pc-speak was never an invention of humorists, as he claims at one point, though it was satirized in a couple of books he claims are the source of the outrage. Strange...
Hey, some books should best be left to the pros. Simple as that.
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