Made in America (edit title)

• Rated 5 stars

“One of the most entertaining books I've ever read. Finally a handbook to Americanese for us poor third worlders. Manages to be entertaining while avoiding the typical British sneer towards American English. I suppose Bryson being an American living in England really does help :)”

• Rated 5 stars

“Not only is it filled with a thousand delicious anecdotes on American English, it's also a rather nice way of learning American history.”

• Rated 4 stars

“This book was recommended to me by my boss who is a Britt and I enjoyed every page. It helped me better understand my boss.”

• Rated 0 stars

“

Fun book with humorous anecdotes from a master of the English language. Bryson gets better in future books.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Bryson continues his study of the english language with this humorous book on the uniquely American aspects of English.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Simply awesome! Everyone who is somewhat interested in the English language will enjoy this collage of anecdotes and behind-the-scene stories.”

• Rated 3 stars

“This is more of Bryson from earlier in his career and still on kind of a linguistic academic jag rather than writing solely to be entertaining. Made in America follows the stories of various inventions by American inventors (e.g., our government, the airplane, the telephone, the personal computer, etc.) and discusses how they came about and what influences they had on the English language as spoken in America and other places.

Frankly, I could have done with more wild tales, apocryphal or otherwise, about the inventions and inventors and less discussions about how interior vowel sounds were dropped by this group and kept by this other completely uninteresting group over there. As I mentioned in my discussion of The Mother Tongue, this isn't Bryson at his best in my opinion. The book shines the most when he takes a detour from the linguistics stuff and talks about the bizarre qualities of the inventors themselves, like how Thomas Edison was a complete bastard in how he waged war against the competing alternating current (AC) electrical standard, even going so far as to stage a public execution by electricity to show how dangerous AC could be. Stuff like that or discussions of Benjamin Franklin's legendary randiness makes for more interesting and even more educational reading.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Not bad, but sorely disappointing. Bryson's other book on English, Mother Tongue, is way better and actually historically interesting. This is one is more like a somewhat witty trivia book. Definitely skippable.”