Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

by Bill Bryson

Book Overview

"A literate exploration of why we use--or mangle--our native tongue."--USA Today

Bill Bryson celebrates America's magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap "Macaroni."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380713810
• ISBN13: 9780380713813
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Informative and Entertaining

The book is a decent read. I found myself laughing out load on multiple occasions while reading it. As is typical with Bryson books there are a multitude of obscure facts and ironic tales. Good book but I was not drawn in enough to give it a full 5 stars.

Thoroughly enjoyable

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.

Bryson Breaths New life and Wit into American History

This book is a wonderful and very witty look at the English language and how it has evolved in America. Did you ever have an English teacher that lectured you about the use (or more likely misuse) of a certain word? Forget all of that! (Or at least loosen up about it!) This book is a testament to the fact that language is alive and a reflection of the culture that uses it.Bryson walks you through American history as he presents story after story usually leaving you laughing and often simply just amazing you with how some word came into common usage. As he tells his story of the English language in America, you will probably learn more about American history than you ever knew before--and all of it is very entertaining.Don't miss the amazing story of Squanto, the Indian who helped the Pilgrims survive at Plymouth, Massachusetts. There is more to Squanto's story than you think and it is just one of hundreds of gems that Bryson has uncovered.This is a fast reading, educational, and very fun book.

Fab, Grouse, Awesome!

I love language and all its peculiarities and variations. Scholarly works like David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language are great reference books. So is this, in a very different way. Not only is it a good "people's history" of some aspects of US history, it is one of those books you reach for when your 'favourite' language pedant starts waxing on about how terrible it is that noone speaks's proper any more, or "the kids of today..." As an Australian, and therefore being trilingual (British, American and Australian English) I love to be able to stop some fool in their tracks with the information that some 'vulgar Americanisms' are actually much older forms of English that were transported and survived, at the same time as English mutated in its homeland. The Grammar Pedants won't have it that English is a living language, that usage, spelling and grammar 'rules' change ... this book shows how it does and also demonstrates how some of the most common words we use to deal with life in our age were once US-invented neologisms or even slang. All this (and more) delivered in Bryson's wry and ironic (read witty) tone.