Phillip Torbert

Calling all anglophiles...read the opening chapter about how the distance Americans drive for a taco represents a journey of enormous undertaking for most English countryside folk.

Engrossing story about the real ship Essex on which Moby Dick was based. Incredibly researched and well-written.

Great travelogue of Australia. I actually couldn't breathe at one point I was laughing so hard after an episode in a park in greater Sidney. Bryson gets a little bogged down in some of the more remote areas of the country and the belly-laughs don't roll as quickly as in some of his other works (notably “A Walk in the Woods”), but on the whole an immensely entertaining and informative Australian journey. You'll learn things you never even though to ask about the country. And just as quickly forget most of them, as does the author.

Read this on my Bryson kick...not his best, but an entertaining and mildly informative if not blatantly nostalgic read about small-town, mostly midwestern, America.

Another Discovery-Channel-in-a-book from Bryson. Fascinating tome of how American English has become the way it is today.