When I started reading this book, I laughed so much my wife wouldn't let me read it in bed. Then she picked it up and discovered how funny it was, and wanted to read it before me. Eventually we compromised, and kept it in the car; the rule was that whoever was driving had to read it to the driver. Several times, however, the reader was laughing so hard that they couldn't get comprehensible words out, and the driver had to pull over to the hard shoulder and grab the book for themselves.

Yes, he's a curmudgeon, as other reviewers here have noticed. That's just his style. He's not deep, either; his occasional ruminations aren't negligible, but he's no Mark Twain. But he has an acidly sharp eye for inanity and stupidity, and his anecdotal technique is flawless.

His other travel books are along much the same lines, but to me this is the funniest, though "A Walk in the Woods" does show he is capable of good introspective writing. "The Lost Continent" is sharp, satirical, acute, and unkind--wickedly funny in every sense of the word.

41 of 47 found the following review helpful:


Young Bryson Can't Match the Mature  Sep 06, 2001 By Wayne A. Smith
This is my third Bill Bryson book. Thank goodness this was not my first, for I probably would not have picked up "In a Sunburned Country," and "A Walk In The Woods."

Where Bryson's latest books are droll, witty and endearing, "The Lost Continent" is frequently petty, forced and mean. In this book Bryson travels around 38 states in a beat up Chevette, often through small towns and out of the way places not usually visited by many. He didn't have a very good trip.

Most of this book revolves around the author's put-downs of people he sees and caustic comments about places he visits. After a few hundred pages, the observations seem awfully gratuitous. Where disappointments, angst and difficult people were treated with amusement in his later books, here he often dismisses similar trials here with the brilliant and trenchant observation "FU". Not much authorship in those moments.

Not to say that there aren't some funny passages. Several times on the train, I found myself reading out loud. However, I also found myself speed reading ahead several times, an unfortunate first for a Bryson Book. Bryson's later works also weave a good deal of interesting historical background and place descriptions into the book. That is almost totally missing in this effort.

He occasionally comes up with some awfully good writing. For example, he described driving toward the mountains in Colorado as "driving into the opening credits of a Paramount Picture." (sic). Unfortunately, there are not enough of those moments and instead too many paragraphs describing how he had another bad meal in another bad town with too many ice cream and pizza parlors and not enough ambiance or fetching waitresses to suit his tastes. Bryson has produced much better. But don't let this book (or review) put you off an author whose books can be very satisfying companions. Just go for his more recent stuff.

49 of 61 found the following review helpful:


When it's not "boring," America's great!  Jul 09, 2000 By D. McDiffett "iteachlit"
Pity poor Bill Bryson. He had the chance many of his readers would love to have--travel throughout the US with apparently no money or time constraints. (Even if a Chevy Chevette may not be everyone's idea of comfortable travel!) However, the main word Bryson can find to describe places he doesn't care for is the oft-repeated "boring." The Mississippi River is "flat and dull," and merely driving is almost invariably "boring," unless the scenery is spectacular. Ah, what's a guy to do when he has book to write? Carry on, despite overcrowded national parks, sleepy small towns, ignorant people and the occasional threatening weather. Still, in spite of the negative attitude Bryson so frequently adopts, the book is entertaining and enlightening. Perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I agree with so many of Bryson's views about the over-commercialization of America's natural wonders and historical places. I also sympathize with his regrets for the lost small towns, particularly the downtowns which have been decimated by the development of malls, strip malls, large discount stores and fast food franchises until all small towns look depressingly the same. Perhaps the best thing one can say about a book like this is that it made me want to make my own journey of exploration, to discover the country on my own. And that, I believe, is the response any travel writer would love to have. Bryson succeeds and so I recommend the book to all readers who can smile at the foibles of America and Americans, including, perhaps, themselves.

25 of 30 found the following review helpful:


Humor -- and much more  Jun 19, 2001
Since many of the reviews below do a fine job of describing this book's general attributes, I'll just mention a few things you'd best remember when reading a Bill Bryson book, particularly The Lost Continent:

First, Mr Bryson's doesn't write guidebooks or serious travelogues. He writes anti-guidebooks. Much of The Lost Continent is a counterpoint -- indeed a cure -- for the attacks of 'Meaningfulness And Insight' one sometimes suffers when reading even the best of the 'serious' travel writers such as Jonathan Raban.

Second, he's not making fun of the places he goes, the people he meets, and the things he sees because he's a big old meanie. He's trying to be funny, and he tells the unvarnished truth about what he sees and experiences, unlike many travel writers --both professional and amateur -- who simply cannot admit they've come a long way to see something, only to find it disappointing. Mr Bryson is criticized in many reviews for being a 'tourist' not a 'traveler', but it's only tourists who think every sight they see is fascinating simply because they've chosen to see it.

Third, Mr Bryson's not 'arrogant' because he doesn't praise everything about America and Americans. In fact, if American readers can hold back their splutters of outrage, they'd realize very quickly that he's *including himself* in nearly all the jokes he makes. A surpassingly ignorant reviewer below has asserted, for example, that our Bill's a hypocrite because he makes jokes about fat people, but then dines on a six-pack and candy bars. Well, of course he does -- Mr Bryson's acknowledging that, for all his griping about fast food and convenience stores and fat bellies, he's no better able to resist temptation than any other American. How many other travel writers -- or any writers at all -- allow us to see them being so fallible? This is arrogance?

Finally, I would recommend that the careful reader of The Lost Continent will find much more here than humorous description and anecdote, although both abound. There's also a story. Its only real character, of course, is Bill Bryson, but it's a character who is ultimately open to and changed by his experiences, both in making his comic journeys and in the remembrances of his boyhood his travels evoke. Mr Bryson is seeking more than just an elusive epitome of small-town America; he's trying to learn how to be an American again after a long time away, and he's finding it tough going at times. As an American (an Iowan, even) who's lived overseas for more than a decade myself, I find this story more and more compelling every time I come back to visit both 'lost continents' -- the real one, and this fine book.

Highly recommended.

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