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| The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Black Swan
Category: Book
Buy Used: $1.98
New (3) Used (15) from $1.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 152448
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0552772542
EAN: 9780552772549
ASIN: 0552772542
Publication Date: 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: **UK SHIPPED** With friendly customer service! Sent by air mail, usually takes 10-15 days "Buy with confidence, Buy Book EcoLOGICal"
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| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 Des Moines' own local hero in defense of a boy's right to be dirty July 11, 2008
21 out of 31 found this review helpful
Approximately normal, but at times excessively disgusting, Bryson gives us the frog's perspective to Halberstam's magnificent bird's eye view of the Fifties.
Bryson's specific kind of humour, the exaggeration to absurdity of nearly everything, can be very funny, but also trying. Boys will be boys, so they do odd things, but when you exaggerate them, they go a bit out of their normal frame. Some of his stories are plain yukki. (eating buttered popcorn in a cinema while peeling something soft away from underneath the chair? crawling underneath the toilet partitions to lock all doors from the inside? watching the man with the hole in his throat while he eats and speaks? etc ad nauseam, literally)
So the fun is there but not always.
Apart from that, my main reason to read the book is the fact that Bryson grew up with a dad who was a sports reporter, and in Bryson's surely not exaggerated recollection the greatest American baseball reporter ever. Now that I have resigned from my less than promising career as a reviewer at Amazon.de to focus fully on Amazon.com, I realized that I have no clue why you guys like baseball so much.
After Bryson, I still don't have a clue, but I learned one thing: it must help to have grown up with it. I guess I will never make it even to the outer circles of the half-initiated.
 Made in America's Heartland January 3, 2008
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
"Getting into the strippers' tent would become the principal preoccupation of my pubescent years." - Bill Bryson in THUNDERBOLT KID
"Essentially matinees were an invitation to four thousand children to riot for four hours in a large darkened space." - Bill Bryson in THUNDERBOLT KID
As I mature gracefully, reading the coming-of-age reminiscences of others that grew up about the same time I did - the 1950s - becomes an absorbing leisure activity. Perhaps I just need to supplement my failing memory with theirs. In any case, several fine volumes of the genre come to mind: Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood by Susan Allen Toth, Sleeping Arrangements by Laura Shaine Cunningham, When All the World Was Young: A Memoir by Barbara Holland, and Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin. As you may have noticed, all four of these are by female authors who are recalling their girlhood. On the other hand, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID, by Bill Bryson, is all about boyhood. And, as I think you'll agree, boys are an entirely different species from girls. I should know as I used to be one of the former. For example, boys have a propensity for shenanigans that would elicit an "Eeeuw!" from the gentler sex, as the following passage on Lincoln Logs, of which I myself had a set, illustrates:
"What Buddy Doberman and I discovered was that if you peed on Lincoln Logs you bleached them white. As a result we created, over a period of weeks, the world's first albino Lincoln Log cabin, which we took to school as part of a project on Abraham Lincoln's early years."
Or this regarding the elementary school's space heaters:
"The most infamous radiator-based activity was of course to pee on the radiator in one of the boys' bathrooms. This created an enormous sour stink that permeated whole wings of the school for days on end and could not be got rid of through any amount of scrubbing or airing."
I'm virtually certain that Susan, Laura, Barbara and Doris never did either.
Bill's recollections otherwise ran the gamut of those of any kid of either sex from that era: family vacations, the first televisions, favorite TV shows, the nature of contemporary comic books, toys, soda pop and candies, parents' occupations and eccentricities, Mom's cooking, the specter of The Bomb and Godless Communism, drop and cover drills, Saturday afternoons at the movie matinees, the National Pastime (major league baseball), the State Fair, Dick and Jane books, visits to Grandpa's farm, paper routes, strange relatives, and Best Friends. Oddly, there's no mention anywhere of a family pet. Is it that he never had one? How is this possible?
Then, of course, there's the budding fascination with sex that includes the discovery of Ol' Dad's secret stash of girlie mags and the unfulfilled, feverish desire to see play pal Mary O'Leary nekkid.
As in the author's other books, his ability to tell the story with a wry and self-deprecating wit is unmatched by any contemporary writer that I've read with the exception of Barbara Holland. Both are national treasures.
Bryson's young adventures took place in Des Moines, Iowa, a much different environment than the Southern California in which I had mine. But, there's a degree of similarity that transcends region so long as that region lies in the U.S. of A. One of Bill's nostalgias in particular that I wouldn't have recalled in a million years but is oh, so true was:
"Of all the tragic losses since the 1950s, mimeograph paper may be the greatest. With its rapturously fragrant, sweetly aromatic pale blue ink, mimeograph paper was literally intoxicating."
It's in the nature of the aging human to recall previous times as so much better. Nowadays, as we're inundated with rampant political correctness, discredited heroes, and the pathetic likes of Paris, Britney and Lindsay, I can look back and say about many things, as Bill does:
"... I saw the last of something really special. It's something I seem to say a lot these days."
Those fabulous 50's June 13, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
A father who's a top sports columnist. Wax teeth, the Butter Boys, infatuation with atomic energy, and a booming post-war economy. Is it any wonder that Bill Bryson (the second) turned out the way he did? Reading this crazy essay is a walk down memory lane for baby boomers. Who could forget crawling under a school desk to ward off the effects of a nuclear attack by communists? Or the rise of rock and roll? Bryson recalls and describes it all in his typical dry, wry, and deadpan way. I did not laugh my way all the way through it - that only happened maybe once in each chapter - but I never stopped smiling. Great fun.
Laugh out loud funny! January 24, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Even though this is the era in which my parents grew up, and not me, I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir and would recommend it to people of all ages. While I'm sure the baby boomer generation would really find this book resonating with their life experiences, I think its an intersting look at a unique and fascinating time in our country's history and will appeal to a much wider audience, such as myself (I'm in my late 20's).
The author is hysterical and I found myself laughing out loud throughout the book. It was so interesting to learn about growing up in Des Moines in the 50s - everything from what people ate to how they shopped to the trouble kids and teens got into- it is indeed such a stark contrast to growing up in America today, regardless of where you live.
I think this book would make a particularly great book club selection and would also be interesting reading for history classes or classes on American culture, etc. I HIGHLY recommend it!
A Window into the Joy of Life in the 50's October 20, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Bill Bryson has long distinguished himself as a gifted writer with a knack for entertaining us as he takes us on his travels around the globe. So he does, as well, in his memoir, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," although this time, it is time travel back to the 1950's. It is very much a window into the time in which he--and I--grew up, a retrospective for Baby Boomers. He captures it perfectly, and were it not for the fact that his childhood was in Des Moines, it just as well could have been mine, in Chicago. I found myself chuckling with familiarity at his memories, which parallel my own in so many ways, from penny candy to reversible jackets, and from air raid drills to dentist drills--sans novocaine. His sense of amusement, cynicism and even awe at that which went on around him, along with his wry observations of the family he grew up in, has no doubt been seasoned by his age, maturity and reflection, but in many ways, it is also an unfiltered look at a simpler time, with the perspective of his years burnishing, rather than altering, what it was like to grow up in mid-twentieth century middle America. I recommend "Thunderbolt Kid" highly to all who relish the chance to sit down and savor what could just as well be their own family album, in words that could just as well be pictures. A thoroughly enjoyable and magical read.
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