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Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson hiked only 870 miles of the 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail to write his oddball account of the ordeal, A Walk in the Woods, but his many misadventures made up for all the missed miles. Bryson, born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1951, transplanted himself to England in 1977 where he wrote for the British newspapers, The Times and The Independent. He stayed abroad for 20 years, marrying an English woman and raising a family in the countryside of North Yorkshire before deciding to move back to America in the 1990s. Before leaving England, he made a final trip through his adopted country to write Notes from a Small Island (1996), a hilarious compilation of the oddities

Books by Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Walk in the Woods : Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

In a Sunburned Country

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

Notes from a Small Island

The Mother Tongue

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Made in America

Bill Bryson's African Diary

of English life. Since 1989, Bryson has been winning American fans to the ironic British humor he absorbed during his overseas tenure as a journalist. Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, (1989) recounted his journey through the small-town America of 38 states in his mother's aging Chevy. Bryson has written several more travel books about America and Australia, as well as explorations of the how the English language is (mis)spoken. His latest book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, (2003) is an ambitious undertaking, charting the history of the universe from the first burp of the Big Bang to the modern age-a project motivated by his own curiosity. Despite Bryson's less-than-serious approach to the outdoors, A Walk in the Woods is considered required reading for any potential AT thru-hikers. His constant concern with bears and the travails of his overweight hiking companion, Stephen Katz, who pitched most of their gear over a cliff during the first week, provide plenty of fuel for Bryson's underhanded style of humor. The British newspaper, The Times, warned that his book "[should not] be read in public, for fear of emitting loud snorts." In addition to writing, he edited The Best American Travel Writing 2000. Bryson currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and four children.

The (Seriously, Truly, Very) Fatal Shore
Australia's full of things waiting to sting, prong, chomp, drown, or lay you out with a toxic nip. People go missing there all the time. But the beer is cold. The sun mostly shines. And the author figures if he can remember to never leave the asphalt, he just might make it back alive.

You Gotta Have Friends. Which is Damned Unfortunate.
Tackling the Appalachian Trail on a whim would require a few essentials. I realized, foremost among them a boon companion. What I got was Katz.

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