The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

by Bill Bryson

The theft of the 1960 presidential election was a longstanding plaint of his,

I will say this, however—and it’s a strange, strange thing—the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable, as soft and gloriously rounded and naturally fresh-smelling as a basket of fruit. I don’t know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked.

And Iowans, I am proud to tell you, have the highest literacy rate in the nation: 99.5 percent of grownups there can read.

I read once that it takes 75,000 trees to produce one issue of the Sunday New York Times—and it’s well worth every trembling leaf. So what if our grandchildren have no oxygen to breathe? Fuck ’em.

WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WE SHOOT TO KILL.

The Melungeons

Do you know that if you are a black man in urban America you now stand a one-in-nineteen chance of being murdered? In World War II, the odds of being killed were one in fifty.

But by the 1960s Route 1 had become too congested to be practical—a third of all Americans live within twenty miles of it—and

Bretton Woods,

It was here in 1944 that economists and politicians from twenty-eight nations got together and agreed to set up the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

table, a bottle containing Thomas Edison’s last breath.

Sault Ste. Marie was just to the north. Its great locks connect Lake Huron and Lake Superior and are the busiest in the world, carrying a greater volume of tonnage than the Suez and Panama canals combined, believe it or not.

Red Cloud, home of Willa Cather,

Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000.

The book, when it came out in 1965, was considered an instant classic, largely because Capote told everyone it was.

Santa Fe

words. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in America—it was founded in 1610, a decade before the Pilgrims set off from Plymouth—and

The scale of the Grand Canyon is almost beyond comprehension. It is ten miles across, a mile deep, 180 miles long.

Nevada has the highest crime rate of any state, the highest rape rate, the second highest violent crime rate (it’s just nosed out by New York), the highest highway fatality rate, the second highest rate of gonorrhea (Alaska is the trophy holder) and the highest proportion of transients—almost 80 percent of the state’s residents were born elsewhere. It has more prostitutes than any other state in America. It has a long history of corruption and strong links with organized crime. And its most popular entertainer is Wayne Newton.

There are only 70 towns in the entire state—the

missed. At any given time there are an estimated twelve to fifteen serial murderers at large in the country, just drifting around, snatching random victims and then moving on, leaving behind few clues and no motives.

Grand Teton National Park. And there’s another arresting name for you. Tetons means tits in French.

I drove into Buffalo. In 1892 it was the scene of the famous Johnson County War, the incident that inspired the movie Heaven’s Gate,

Sundance, thirty miles further down the road. Sundance is the town from which the Sundance Kid took his name,

the tower was considered sacred by the Indians and that in 1906 it became the first designated national monument in America.

in 1906 it became the first designated national monument in America.

Deadwood was one of the liveliest and most famous towns in the West. It was the home of Calamity Jane. Wild Bill Hickock was shot dead while playing cards in a local saloon.