by Bill Bryson
Book Review by Will Arntz

I need to start off this review with a disclosure: I'm a nerd. It will become apparent later why that was/is necessary. I was traveling in Europe a few months ago, had finished my books, and was in a part of Tuscany where English books were as prevalent as Buffalo Wings when a copy of this book arrived in my hands. (From the "leave one — take one" shelf at the hotel.)

Review by Pavel Mikoloski

In the 60's and 70's, quite a number of East Coast preppies migrated to liberal arts colleges across the country. I was one of them and ended up at Beloit College, a beautiful ivy-encrusted gem sitting atop a hill in an industrial town surrounded by the endless panoply of Midwestern cornfields. The farm culture was almost unknown to me and many of the other city and suburbanites at Beloit College, which was a stronghold for 60's radicalism and progressive intellectual pursuits. And yet the train to the college passed though farm after farm on the flat Midwestern landscape which stretched out to the horizon with nary a hill in sight.