One Summer
Let our favourite writer of narrative non-fiction take you back to a summer when America came of age and changed the world for ever. In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
8mentions
6people
2014–2026years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Two other books in that vein that I really liked:
1. A World Lit Only by Fire — William Manchester
2. One Summer: America, 1927 — Bill Bryson
- Anything by Bill Bryson, but especially “At Home” and “One Summer: America, 1927”. Both are brilliant.
“John Adams” by David McCullough. Possibly the best historical bio ever.
“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes. The best recounting of the founding of Los Alamos.
“Hackers” by Steven Levy. The best book on the birth of creatine coding.
“The Soul of a New Machine” by Tracy Kidder. The best tale of hardware design I know.
“Masters of Doom” by David Kushner. The best book on the early days of gaming, esp. about Carmack and Romero.
Anything by Eric Raymond, esp. “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”.
- All of these are by Bill Bryson but none are about travel:
Shakespeare: the World as Stage
One Summer: America, 1927
The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way
Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the US
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
- I recently, by accident, read two books that worked really well together:
One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The Bill Bryson book is, I think, a work of subtle genius - he makes stuff that I would normally have no interest in absolutely fascinating (e.g. baseball).
It was purely accidental that I read these in the order I did and so close together - but the extensive descriptions of the adventures of Lindbergh and other aviators did provide a great background for the Roth novel.
- This year involved a career change, so much of my reading was oriented around my shift from flight test engineering to software engineering.
Non-fiction (technical):
* Code Complete, 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell. I can't say enough good things about this. I have kept referring to it in the months since I read it for the first time.
* Computation Structures by Stephen A. Ward. I have read most of this one; it's a good reference for understanding computers at various levels of abstraction.
* Simulation and its Discontents by Sherry Turkle
* Scientific Computation: Python Hacking for Math Junkies by Bruce E. Shapiro. Good for getting back into Python after a few years away.
* Accelerating MATLAB Performance by Yair Altman. Altman has an exhaustive knowledge of MATLAB and this book is a must for anyone doing serious work in MATLAB.
* Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline by Cathy O'Neil
History:
* The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, by Peter Heather. Very well researched and written narrative examining how the Empire fared in the 3rd-5th centuries. Has a different perspective than the usual "Barbarian invasions ended the empire".
* One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. I love everything Bryson writes. This is no exception.
* Rocket Ranch: The Nuts and Bolts of the Apollo Moon Program at Kennedy Space Center by Jonathan H. Ward. Also read Countdown to a Moon Launch: Preparing Apollo for Its Historic Journey by the same author. Ward writes the most amazing technical histories. It's quite obvious that he spent massive amounts of time piecing together exactly how things at Kennedy worked during the Apollo years. It's full of amazing little details like which firing rooms were used for which mission, how the entire Saturn V stack was rap-tested (literally having people lie on their backs on a work-platform and synchronously press against the rocket with their legs to try to get it to resonate), and so much more. If you are an Apollo program enthusiast you must read these two books.
Biography
* Kelly: More than my Share of it All by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson. The man was a far better engineer than writer. A much better look at Kelly's business life was put together by his protege, Ben Rich (with Leo Janos), in "Skunkworks: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed".
* Fighter Pilot, by Robin Olds. Autobiography of one of the brashest, best aces of World War II and Vietnam.
* American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day, by Robert Coram. Not as well-written as Coram's biography of John Boyd. Or maybe Boyd just appeals more to my fighter-jet engineering side.
* Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. Amazing account of what it was like to be a combat rotary-wing pilot in Vietnam.
Other Non-Fiction
* The M1 Garand Owner's Guide by Scott A. Duff. Worth it for Garand owners.
* Atlas Obscura: A Guide To the World's Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer. The print book is beautiful and ever fascinating.
* This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, by Naomi Klein. Like a lot of popular non-fiction, this could have been an excellent long-form article instead.
Fiction:
* The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 by Lionel Shriver. A book with a high concept story and poor execution.
* The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Not my first time reading it, but just as enjoyable on this go-around.
* QB VII by Leon Uris. Fiction, but based on some of Uris's own experiences as the defendant in a libel suit. A solid read.
* Noble House, by James Clavell. The only book in his Asian series I hadn't read. Amazing, as are all the rest.
* The Tao Trilogy by Wesley Chu. Eh. First book was decent, it got tedious after that. Only finished it all because I was on a business trip with poor internet access.
* The Power of the Dog, by Don Winslow. I also read the follow-up, The Cartel. Winslow researched these books for years and they are powerful indictments of the War on Drugs. They're also good fiction, but many of the characters have real-world analogues. I spent quite a bit of time during/after reading these looking up the real-world history of the drug wars since 1975.
- Books this year that I loved:
"A Place of Greater Safety" - Hilary Mantel [French Revolution - Danton, Robespierre, Desmoulins ...]
"One Summer: America 1927" - Bill Bryson
"Napoleon the Great" - Andrew Roberts
"Seveneves" - Neal Stephenson
Reading "The Box" at the moment which is pretty interesting.
Related
Made in America
5 recommend · 5
The almost nearly perfect people
2 recommend · 4
At Home
12 recommend · 27
A short history of nearly everything
102 recommend · 138
One minute to midnight
3 recommend · 12
The Mother Tongue
12 recommend · 22
Notes from a small island
3 recommend · 7
