The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

by Bill Bryson

book data

4,960 ratings, 3.85 average rating, 1,168 reviews (more data...)

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5		25%
4		42%
3		25%
2		5%
1		1%

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published

September 25th 2007 by Broadway

binding

Paperback, 268 pages

setting

The United States

isbn

0767919378 (isbn13: 9780767919371)

description

From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 19

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From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

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03/29/07

Drew rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in March, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone who enjoys humor and Americana

I'm a big fan of Bill Bryson's writing, but this one was both uplifting and saddening at the same time. The premise of the book is how Bill learned to see a country be wooed by the siren song of prosperity through the guise of his own internal superhero persona, the Thunderbolt Kid. This is an engaging book which takes the reader back to simpler times, with plenty of Bryson's characteristic laugh-out-loud funny moments to go around. The Thunderbolt Kid persona is really a subtitle to the main id...more

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11/29/07

Erin added it (review of isbn 076791936X)

the bloody head-bashing-in-story.

that was the critical turning point in the novel-reading for me, personally. the moment i realized bill bryson is a comedic wonderchild. the moment i was simultaneously overjoyed to have discovered him as a writer and depressed i wasted so much time trying to pretend erma bombeck could truly capture the lasting effects of one's childhood experiences with sex ed. the moment i spit an unhealthy mixture of sprite and airline peanuts all over the back of...more

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04/13/08

James rated it:

Read in November, 2008

Reading The Thunderbolt Kid will bring you to tears. Of laughter. The guy in the next row on the airplane will try to vaporize you when your sudden burst of laughter startles him so much his coffee spills in his lap. Or reading in bed trying desperately to stifle your laughter, hoping not to irritate your spouse, will result in the bed shaking like a coin operated bed massage at the Dew Drop Inn in Paradise, Pennsylvania.

The mixture of innocence and insanity of the United States in t...more

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01/08/08

Rodger rated it:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a must read for anyone who grew up in the fifties and sixties. He captures life in the fifties and early sixties through the lens of a pre-teen boy. Though he grew up in one of Iowa's larger cities and I grew up in a small New Mexico town, the experiences are very similiar.

Be ready to laugh out loud, but beware, he uses some language that I would have been given the old "Wash your mouth out with soap" treatment.

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05/27/08

Joey rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

recommends it for: Iowans of a certain age.

This is the first book I've read by Bryson and I do intend to read a couple more.

The Thunderbolt Kid is wildly funny, a simple memoir of Bryson's childhood in Des Moines in the 1950s. Oddly enough, change comes slowly to Iowa and I could relate to much of his experience and sentiment having spent my own Iowa childhood in the 1960s.

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03/29/08

Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in January, 2008

Book Review

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
By Bill Bryson

Reviewed by Tom Carrico

I am not usually one to enjoy a memoir. There always seems to be a certain smugness that someone must possess to have the audacity to think that their story is better than, well, mine. This memoir, however, is different. Bill Bryson’s childhood ruminations could belong to anybody who grew up in the 1950s. Change Des Moines, Iowa to Arlington, Virginia and this ...more Book Review

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
By Bill Bryson

Reviewed by Tom Carrico

I am not usually one to enjoy a memoir. There always seems to be a certain smugness that someone must possess to have the audacity to think that their story is better than, well, mine. This memoir, however, is different. Bill Bryson’s childhood ruminations could belong to anybody who grew up in the 1950s. Change Des Moines, Iowa to Arlington, Virginia and this story could even be mine. If you are under 40 you probably won’t enjoy this book as much as those of us who actually endured this particular decade. This book reads like a “Saturday Night Live” send-up of David Halberstam’s The Fifties. Like Halberstam, Bryson touches on the many social and cultural events and changes of the 1950s including the space race, the development of the nuclear bomb, the evolution of the suburbs coupled with the decline of the inner cities and the emergence of television. This author, however, takes great pride in pointing out the absurdities and ironic inconsistencies of that era. He describes his refusal to participate in the required civil defense drills, pointing out to his elementary school teacher the absolute irrationality of thinking that crawling under a desk could protect a child from a nuclear explosion. I remember thinking these same thoughts as I toted bottled water and canned goods to St. Ann’s School in Arlington which happened to be three miles from the Pentagon. Unlike Bill Bryson, I did get under the desk when told to. I feared for my life, not from an A-bomb, but from the wrath of Sister Mary Angelus.

The author was able to jog my feeble memory about certain items which are long gone. In one hilarious segment he describes the cumbersome winter boots we all had. Bill Bryson claims that the clasps, which required an incredible dexterity to fasten, were actually made from razor blades. He is equally as funny when describing how kids passed their time during the fifties. He explains that parents would kick the kids outdoors in the early morning and not expect to see them again until dinner time. The ridiculous toys of the era are recalled in great detail. The authors favorites were Lincoln Logs (where the box shows all of these great forts and structures and the contents are only enough to construct a small hut with one window), erector sets and electric football. It is hard to imagine in this day of Xbox and Playstation that electric football ever existed. I actually had two of these sets, one a hand-me-down from my cousin Mike. The author wryly and accurately describes setting up the players on the metal “field” and turning on the electricity which caused the field to vibrate and all of the plastic players to fall over or migrate towards the wrong goal line. There is also an awesome description of the complete disaster which was constructing plastic model airplane kits.

The name of the book comes from the author’s fascination with comic book heroes. He constructed his own alter-ego and named him Thunderbolt Kid. He imagined his super powers and practiced making teachers and principals disappear.

The greatest segments of Thunderbolt are when Bill Bryson recalls the early days of television. He muses over the physical differences between the comic book Superman and the flabby television version. He fondly recalls the Sky King show (and how Sky would fly around endlessly in his airplane for no particular reason) and his crush on Sky’s niece Penny. Tell the truth: didn’t we all have a crush on Penny? He also points out that television cowboys in the 50s never really shot anybody. They shot AT people, for sure, but usually just shot guns out of the bad guys’ hands or shot their hats off. Yes, it was a different era.

The television anecdote that evoked the most vivid memory for me was his description of how Walt Disney used his television show to make every kid in America dream of going to Disneyland in Anaheim. For you youngsters, this was when Orlando was still a backwater town and Disney World didn’t exist. Bill Bryson’s family finally went and, by golly, so did mine. My sister and her husband moved to California in the sixties and I remember going to visit them and getting to go to Disneyland. I was about twelve or thirteen, I guess, and I remember standing on Main Street and looking at Cinderella’s Castle in absolute awe. They gave you a book of coupons on admission in those days when you paid to get in. The coupons had different values and colors and the E coupons were the good ones (for the Matterhorn ride and Space Mountain). I remember not wanting to use the last E coupon because then it would be time to leave.

There are some serious moments here as well. Mr. Bryson notes that with the passage of time the family farm has basically disappeared from the American landscape. He also regrets the loss of the supreme optimism and sense of innocence which pervaded America in the 1950s.

This is a must read for anyone born before 1955. For you youngsters, this book may help you understand why we boomers are as odd as we are. One warning, though: there are segments that are so funny you want to stop and tell everyone around you about them.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson is available in trade paperback from Broadway Books publishers.
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03/01/08

Michael Endo rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: People who like Bill Bryson and/or the 50's

Even though this is a memoir it is difficult not to think about it in the context of other superhero/childhood stories. Kavalier and Clay and Fortress of Solitude come to mind. Among these books the Thunderbold Kid falls flat.
The image Bryson paints of the fifties is truly magnificent. He really captures the excitement of the beginning of the space age. It is when he is elaborating on this time that I am captivated, but when he speaks specifically about his own life I get a little b...more

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03/01/08

Trish rated it:

(review of isbn 0552772542)

Bill Bryson admits that “this book is a book about not very much: about being small and getting larger slowly.” So, there aren’t any accounts of overcoming tragic circumstances in this memoir. What you will find in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a laugh-out-loud look at growing up in 1950s Des Moines, Iowa.

Although aimed at baby boomers, anyone can appreciate Bryson’s wise-cracking observations and heart-warming nostalgia over more simple times. The way he i...more

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08/08/08

Diane rated it:

(review of isbn 0739315234)

bookshelves: a-favorite-read, audio-books-read

Read in August, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

My son has been raving about Bill Bryson's for some time now, but I was not sure that they would appeal to me. After hearing others rave about his memoir: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, I thought this might be a fun audio book. I am sorry I waited so long to try Bryson's work.

This memoir was terrific. It leaves you with a feeling of appreciation for the simple things in life. Bill Bryson and I were born a year apart, and as baby boomers growing up in the 50's and 60's, I ...more

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11/25/07

Liquid Medication rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: anyone

I really enjoyed this book. Not because it was a brilliant piece of writing, but because it did for me what any good book should do: made me feel something.

I felt good. I had a smile on my face. I really long for a simpler life and the picture Bryson painted of his childhood in Iowa had me feeling as if I was there with him and also helped me reminisce about some memories from my childhood I cherish.

Bryson’s writing style is at times all over the place, darting from on...more

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10/07/07

Sri rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

bookshelves: biography-memoir

Read in October, 2007

I love it. Mr Bill brought out his memory as a kid growing up in Des Moines, a peaceful city in Iowa, on 50's. Beside his own memory I believe he used many archives as his references so he could describe that era and the place so detailed.
50's in America is the age of dream. It's so funny, as Mr Bill said, "Never have people looked so ridiculous and so happy at the same time."
I like Mr Bill's parent. His mom was wonderful, very forgetful but very lovable as well. His dad, h...more

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03/22/09

Jennifer rated it:

bookshelves: 2009, bill_bryson, book-club, memoirs

Read in April, 2009

recommends it for: my Dad

I really enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was fun to read about life in the 50's for Bill and make parallels to my own childhood in a small town in the midwest. I laughed out loud many times and nodded my head a bunch of times.

One of my favorite parts is when Bill's mom convinces him to go to school in his sister's pants - lime green capri pants! She told him they were pirate pants. Very funny.

This was a very enjoyable read and I look forward to reading his other books...more

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07/10/07

Alicia rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Bill Bryson is best suited for travel writing, where his crotchety personality shines through and assures us that the act of traveling is not always as romantic as Kerouac would have you believe-in other words, its ok to go through hell before you start to have a good time. His memoirs are good because he is funny and disparaging and all that Bryson is supposed to be, but the preachiness regarding the decline of small-town middle America is a bit much. You can't quite avoid the feeling that he...more

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09/12/07

Jenny rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in March, 2007

Bill Bryson is hilarious. This, his latest work and his memoirs of his formative years in Iowa, is just as good as any of his travel writing. I learned a lot about what life must've been like for my parents, who are of his generation and who also grew up in the midwest. I was especially fascinated with Bryson's nostalgic-but-not-too-nostalgic take on the social and cultural trends of the time, and I learned a lot about how cavalier the US was about atomic testing back then. o.O So yeah. Great re...more

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02/12/09

Duane rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in February, 2009

Although I've never been a fan of memoirs and autobiographies, a friend suggested I try this one and I'm grateful they did. Billy Bryson's wonderful writing style takes you away from modern day and transports you to the idealic 50's in such a magical way it's haunting. Having not grown up back then but knowing some about it, hearing his memories of growing up back then makes me want so badly to find someway to go and see if for myself. Great writing should make you forget your world and take you...more

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01/03/09

thefourthvine rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

bookshelves: biographies-autobiographies-memoirs, kindle

Read in January, 2009

Bill Bryson is always fun, and his switch from travel memoirs to autobiography isn't really much of a switch at all - this book is a natural for him. But it will never be my favorite of his works.

That said, the book is good. Bryson's work is all about the narrative voice, and he's right at the peak of his ability here; he's honed and developed his voice and his style, but he hasn't reached what we might call the Dave Barry point, the place where a writer's current work becomes a car...more Bill Bryson is always fun, and his switch from travel memoirs to autobiography isn't really much of a switch at all - this book is a natural for him. But it will never be my favorite of his works.

That said, the book is good. Bryson's work is all about the narrative voice, and he's right at the peak of his ability here; he's honed and developed his voice and his style, but he hasn't reached what we might call the Dave Barry point, the place where a writer's current work becomes a caricature of his older, better work. So, for the sheer craft of it, this book is a great read. It's funny, it's light, it's fast.

Unfortunately, Bryson falls into basically every trap that waits for an autobiographer. He persistently mourns all the changes that have taken place since the '50s - oh noes! The world is different! And I remember liking the old things, therefore all this change is bad! He doesn't get that he remembers things as being shiny and golden because he had a happy childhood. Things look fabulous through a nostalgic lens, and it's the lens that matters, not the things themselves. If he'd had that same happy childhood in the 1900s, he'd be mourning the introduction of cars and women's suffrage.

Which is the other problem. Bryson was privileged, and he seems to have missed that - sure, he writes about McCarthyism and racism, but he doesn't seem to understand that his own perfect, shiny childhood was largely a result of his own privilege - and other people's lack of privilege.

Just in general, the section dealing with race is painful to read; he says he never heard anyone say anything racist (except his grandmother) even as he spouts every possible racist stereotype about the blacks who attended his high school. It's pretty clear that he doesn't really understand that racism is more than shooting blacks who try to vote. (And I'm not going to go into the sexism, largely because I suspect any honest memoir of a teenaged boy is going to be, well, hugely sexist.)

So, while this is a fun book to read, it's also uncomfortable in places - the places where Bryson exposes much more of himself than he intended to.(less)

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03/17/08

David rated it:

(review of isbn 0552772542)

Read in November, 2007

My father was born in 1948 in Edmonton (although he was loth to admit it), and he spent his childhood in a number of small towns in southern Alberta and British Columbia. I didn't ask him nearly enough about his childhood before he passed away, and I hold on to those few reminiscences of his that I remember as emblematic of a childhood spent raucously and well: putting on cardboard armor and shooting BB guns at his friends; his class spontaneously standing in two long lines in the schoolyard, t...more My father was born in 1948 in Edmonton (although he was loth to admit it), and he spent his childhood in a number of small towns in southern Alberta and British Columbia. I didn't ask him nearly enough about his childhood before he passed away, and I hold on to those few reminiscences of his that I remember as emblematic of a childhood spent raucously and well: putting on cardboard armor and shooting BB guns at his friends; his class spontaneously standing in two long lines in the schoolyard, throwing paint-can lids as makeshift frisbees; him and his brother riding on a float in a local parade to promote the dairy where my grandfather worked; sitting on the hood of his parents' car, watching Sputnik go by overhead. It was a different time.

Much later - after he'd left Alberta, done his graduate work, joined the foreign service, had his own kids, served his country abroad - he discovered Bill Bryson. My mother can attest that Bryson's books did to my father what they've done to so many of his readers: prompted repeated, deep, bed-shaking bouts of laughter as he read just one more chapter before turning out the light. My dad, posted to Ireland and later to England, shared Bryson's tender love for the out-and-out wackyness of the British isles; he also shared Bryson's affection for the troubled, starry eyed and strident nation that is the United States.

I inherited a lot from my father, including his taste for Bryson. While originally most well known for his travel writing, the two-time American ex-patriot has gained a second fame recently for his critically and professionally acclaimed A Short History of Nearly Everything, a marvelous intellectual history of science. Bryson won't gain much attention for The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and perhaps that's inevitable. But it's also a shame, because Thunderbolt Kid is a remarkably successful social history of life in America in the 1950s.

The received wisdom today, fed by Hollywood and the baby boom generation, is that the 1950s were a repressive and tyrannical period, an interlude between the creation of universal opportunity at the end of the Second World War and the realization of that opportunity in the Summer of Love of 1968. Today "The Fifties" either means McCarthyism and blacklisting, or James Dean and Grease - the latter two being romanticized glorifications of rebel youths who prefigured the anti-establishment ethos of the boomers.

But one of these portrayals is incomplete, and the other is simply false. McCarthyism was undeniably a part of the 1950s - but far from defining the era, it was simply one manifestation of an infinitely complex cultural reality, one in which there really were communists, and they really were trying to subvert the government; one in which science really was changing the way Americans lived their lives, and cars really were changing the face of the American landscape, and people really did hope, and expect, that the future, just around the corner, would bring peace and prosperity and flying cars - just as long as it didn't bring nuclear war and annihilation first.

Bryson explores all of these themes; but he explores them through the eyes of the child that he was. And more importantly, he explores them through the eyes of a normal American, one who lit firecrackers and skipped class and snuck smokes in high school - just like all his friends, because that's what kids do, and not because he wanted to show The Man what was what.

Of course Bryson augments his personal anecdotes with a characteristically well researched and thoughtfully constructed social history of the era, using his own experiences and those pulled from contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts to contextualize the social changes that are too often caricatured today. And through Bryson's eyes we get a sense of life in America in the 1950s that's a thousand times as complex, and a thousand times as compelling than a thousand earnest films about censorship and blacklists and closet homosexuals and miserable wives.

Because Bryson's Fifties are the real thing; they are what he lived, and what most - including my father - lived. They were neither perfect nor imperfect; neither a movement in their own right nor a standard to be rebelled against. But it is impossible to come away from Thunderbolt Kid without thinking, as Bryson quite obviously does, that there was something special about the Fifties; that, perhaps for the last time in our recent history, growing up in the Fifties meant growing up with a sense of wonder, and of possibility, and without cynicism; and that the loss of that is hardly worth whatever we've gained instead.(less)

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01/02/08

Suede rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone who has heard the same fact on page 223

I'll admit, this 5 star rating is a bit inflated.

I love Bill Bryson, although some of his books are much stronger than others. Because he's Bryson, he automatically gets a star.

The Thunderbolt Kid is not one of his best works. It's an interesting read about growing up in the 1950, and he tells little tidbits about his life, family and friends. He jumps around a lot in this book. I think he used the Thunderbolt Kid is his way of pulling all his different topics togeth...more

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11/29/07

Teddy rated it:

(review of isbn 0739315234)

bookshelves: read-in-2007

Read in October, 2007

A Nostalgia Look Back to the 1950’s

This is the first Bill Bryson book I have read, but certainly not the last!

Bryson takes a hilarious trip down memory lane. He mixes in his childhood memories of Iowa, historical facts, and adds his own character, The Thunderbolt Kid. It’s a recipe for a fun filled ride with belly laughs and nostalgia.

This is a great book for baby boomers, but I think the younger generations will enjoy it as well. He writes of a less s...more

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10/29/07

Laura rated it:

(review of isbn 076791936X)

bookshelves: audiobook, memoirs, nonfiction, november2007

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who loves sarcasm and making fun of stupid people

This is pretty funny so far.

I have a slight complaint and question about the audio version though. The author is narrating, and doesn't speak the clearest. And it's odd that he says certain words the British way (like al-yoo-MIN-eeum foil), give that he grew up like Beaver Cleaver (ok, just figured out he spent 20 years in England!). Though there is always something appealing to me about the author narrating. Never a question that someone else is misunderstanding their meaning, w...more

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