Midwest Books

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Bill Bryson

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 79 new & used starting at $6.19

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Bill Bryson

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 161 new & used starting at $3.89

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 207 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana (Today Show Book Club #3)

Haven Kimmel

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 260 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 197 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Well Written, Yet Troubling 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I concur with much of the praise that precedes me: "Zippy" is a lyrically written, thoughtful, engaging memoir that I read with great pleasure.

And yet, in the end, it was the very pleasure of my reading experience that troubled me. A reviewer below notes, "It is refreshing every once in a while to read a story that doesn't have murder, major drama, or psychological problems." Yet the book is chock full of every one of those things, and then some: those themes are just so sugar-coated, the reader is hypnotized into overlooking them.

A short list of thematic elements touched on by the book includes: depression, alcoholism, birth defects, child-neglect, child sexual abuse, murder, teenage pregnancy, animal cruelty (in abundance), mental illness, religious fanatacism, grinding poverty, gambling addiction, and the Mi Lai Massacre, for goodness' sake!

And yet these themes are all presented in a filmy, dreamlike way that removes their sting and horror. One could argue that that is the theme of the book: the triumph of one child's powerful sense of self over adversity.

However, as I turned the final page, I began to feel that I had been tricked into approving, even admiring, the "good old days" that never were. I believe the author could have and should have demanded more of the reader to connect the dots between events as seen from the child's point of view and the more stark light of adult reality. This book makes it all too easy for the reader to condone a world in which very serious issues are treated as light afternoon reading on the front porch swing.

Editorial Review:

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period–people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy.

She Got Up Off the Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana

Haven Kimmel

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 80 new & used starting at $0.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Haven Kimmel's memoir She Got Up Off the Couch might have been called The Further Adventures of Zippy, since it picks up where her bestselling A Girl Named Zippy left off, and is reeled out in much the same vein. The person who got up off the couch is Zippy's mother, Delonda, who for years sat on the titular sofa, ate, read, and watched TV until she weighed 268 pounds and life was nearly unbearable. You would never know the bad parts from Haven Kimmel, who always concentrates on the bright side, even though she lived in a house without heat, food, indoor plumbing, a dependable water supply or even a modicum of cleanliness. Kimmel loves her parents inordinately, even at their most unlovable.

Delonda takes a College Entrance exam, passes it and enrolls at Ball State, where she completes a degree in two years, goes on for a Master's and gets a job as a high school teacher. That sounds fairly straightforward but it wasn't easy. Bob Jarvis, Delonda's husband and Zippy's father, gave her no help at all; in fact, he ridiculed her and ignored her progress. Eventually, he found someone else while Delonda was busy reclaiming her life. We could read this as a tale of the times, where a woman takes charge of herself, loses 120 pounds and, against all odds, gains an education and a livelihood. It is all of that, and more.

Life in Mooreland, Indiana, in the 1970s is not very exciting, but Zippy finds wonder everywhere and often laughed until she "tipped right over." There is an unquenchable spirit in the girl, and then in the woman, that keeps popping up despite a very sketchy upbringing. The neighbors fed and bathed her, she wore the same pair of pants to school every day for an entire school year--without benefit of laundry. Her brother and sister lit out at the first chance they had--though Melinda ends up only a few blocks away and becomes another safe port for Zippy. She is a victim of benign neglect, not malice or meanness.

Her tales of church camp, days with her friends, driving with her Dad, going to a play with her Mother, her love for her niece and nephew and her discovery that her Dad is having an affair are all told in typical Zippy-style: they are humorous, poignant, exuberant, and often breathless. Stay tuned: this book ends when Zippy is only thirteen. Hopefully there's more to come. --Valerie Ryan

Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life (South Dakota Biography)

Pamela Smith Hill

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: South Dakota State Historical Society Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $7.37

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Wilder bio I've been waiting for! 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

I can hardly say enough good things about this book. It's exactly the sort of Laura Ingalls Wilder biography I've been wishing for: straightforward non-fiction (footnotes and everything!) with a steady focus on Laura, giving equal weight to both the true details of her life and to her writing.

As an author of children's historical fiction herself, Pamela Smith Hill gives ample insight into the craft of Wilder's writing, drawing attention to a great many elements of the structure and theme of the Little House books that I'd never put together myself. Based on those observations, Hill presents a compelling case that despite being steeped in historical and autobiographical details, Wilder's books are indeed fiction -- a personal history consciously trimmed and molded to fit the form and countours of the novel.

Hill also tackles the fascinating editorial partnership between Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane, pointing out with concrete examples how the combination of each woman's natural strengths and gifts contributed to the overall shape and tone of Wilder's novels. Thankfully, Hill manages to keep Rose's dynamic and voilatile personality from overpowering the second half of the book, all the while giving an uncluttered assessment of Rose's role in bringing the Little House stories to print.

I have no complaints about this book. Not a single one.

Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery

Richard Lischer

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $6.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Religious
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Open Secrets captures the friendships, rivalries, and rumors of small-town life by chronicling the lives of the citizens of a small Midwestern community through the eyes of a young minister.

Fresh out of divinity school and bursting with enthusiasm, Richard Lischer found himself assigned to a small conservative church in an economically depressed town in southern Illinois. It’s an awkward marriage at best--a young man with a Ph.D. in theology, full of ideas and ambitions, determined to improve his parish and bring it into the twenty-first century, and a community that is “as tightly sealed as a jar of home-canned pickles.” In Open Secrets, Lischer tells not only his own story but also the story of New Cana and its inhabitants. With charm, openness, and humor, Lischer brings to life the clash of cultures and personalities that marks his pastoral tenure, including his own doubts, as well as those of his parishioners, that a twenty-eight-year-old suburban-raised liberal can deal with the troubled marriages, alcoholism, teen sex, inadequate farm subsidies, and other concerns of the conservative, tightly knit community. But the inhabitants of New Cana--lovable, deeply flawed, imperfect people who stick together--open their arms to him in their own way, and the result is a colorful, poignant comedy of small-town life and all it has to offer.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $14.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

BONUS FEATURE: Exclusive interview with the author.

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 middle of the United States in the middle of the last century. A book that delivers on the promise that it is “laugh-out-loud funny.”

Some say that the first hints that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came from his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman.

Bill Bryson’s first travel book opened with the immortal line, “I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.” In this hilarious new memoir, he travels back to explore the kid he once was and the weird and wonderful world of 1950s America. He modestly claims that this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting much larger slowly. But for the rest of us, it is a laugh-out-loud book that will speak volumes – especially to anyone who has ever been young.

Family

Ian Frazier

Amazon Price: $16.00 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Picador Amazon Marketplace: 72 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Frazier family 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I think it's Frazier's style that is the most attractive thing about this book. He writes in simple declarative sentences with little embellishment - exactly the way someone would tell you a story orally. No histrionics, no deep reflections - just straight facts, boom, boom. It works magnificently here.

He tells a history of his family (it's not really a memoir, at least not until the end, which is the weakest part), going back to his ancestors who first came to America. The best part I think is the first half; Frazier is very interested in the Civil War and spends a lot of time tracing relatives as they fought with the 55th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the 11th Corps. (He goes way off on a tangent writing about Stonewall Jackson; it's interesting but probably could have been edited out.)

Commendable is his willingness to reveal some not very pleasant things about his relatives at times: prejudices, job failings, embarrassments - things that other writers would have kept secret. Unfortunately, as his family history becomes more contemporary he comes across as more self-serving: I felt suddenly that he was writing more for himself than for his audience. An excellent first half, though - and that style is terrific.

Editorial Review:

Using letters and other family documents, Frazier reconstructs two hundred years of middle-class life, visiting small towns his ancestors lived in, reading books they read, and discovering the larger forces of history that affected them. He observes some of them during the British raid on Danbury, Connecticut, in the Revolutionary War; he follows others west as they pioneer in the wilderness of Ohio and Indiana; he visits the battlefields where they fought the Civil War. Frazier interviews old-timers, uncles, aunts, cousins, maids, and a beer-store owner who knew his dad. He pursues the family saga in aspect from trivial to grand, hoping for "a meaning that would defeat death." Family is a poetic epic of facts, a chronicle of Protestant culture's rise and fall, a memorial, and a revised view of American history as romantic as it is cold-eyed.

Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

Amazon Price: $13.22 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Oklahoma Press Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $7.29

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Women

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The shaping of an activist. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book was my introduction to Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz. I read it before I learned more about her and her career as an activist for the past 40 years. She reflects on her life from birth until her move to California. She grew up in rural Oklahoma during some of the worst years ever. These were the years that shaped her, the launching pad of her feminist, anti-family, pro-socialist, anti-war, ... efforts.

The reader can learn a good bit about the Socialist movement in Oklahoma in the early 1900's, the Green Corn Rebellion and the patriotic surge that accompanied World War I.

Roxanne's grandfather, one of the less 'disfunctional' family members was a Socialist and strongly pro-labor and imparted his views to her. She remembers him fondly. It appears that her abusive alcoholic mother influenced her ideas about the family and church. She had very little to say about her mother or father that is not negative. Considering these influences, the dire poverty of her early childhood, and her marriage 'up' the social ladder her views on things are not too surprising. Simple - yes, but undeniably true, at least in part. And that does not take away from her drive, talent and desire to make a positive change in the world.

You can learn more about Roxanne at her website, reddirt.com.

I think I will read Outlaw Woman, the next volume of her story.

Editorial Review:

Now a professor of ethnic studies in California, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz turns her eye back to her own roots as a "Dust Bowl Baby" in rural Oklahoma. In telling the story of her family and their hardships in the Depression, Dunbar-Ortiz introduces the reader to some fascinating characters who are certainly not the "white trash" caricatures of popular belief. Interspersed well with her own story are historical facts that give depth to the narrative and correct popular misconceptions about "Okies" (some of which were popularized by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath).

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for Chicago and the Nation

Adam Cohen, Elizabeth Taylor

Amazon Price: $13.59 List Price: $19.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Back Bay Books Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $3.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Political
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Regional U.S. -> Midwest

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

You might say it took a village to raise this child. Richard Daley and Chicago are inseparable, and it's impossible to discuss one without at least mentioning the other. Consequently, American Pharaoh includes far more material than your average biography; this is as much the story of the city as it is of the man. Covering the years between 1902 and 1976 (that is, between Daley's birth and death), authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor show us a life that in some ways symbolizes the American dream: a boy from a poor neighborhood grows up to wield unimaginable power, yet never forgets his roots. But Daley's was a complicated legacy. While filling Chicago with modern architecture and affecting national politics, he was also held responsible for the segregation and police brutality that tore the city apart during the late '60s and early '70s. Throughout the book, Cohen and Taylor remind readers that Daley's real influence came from the powerful political machine he created. When he didn't like guidelines from national agencies, for example, he went directly to the presidents he helped get elected. When he got bad local press, people lost their jobs and his neighbors marched in his support. When Martin Luther King Jr. came to town, he was greeted by a handpicked organization of African American leaders with strong ties to Daley's machine. It's startling to remember that this was simply a local office; the mayor's loyalties and prejudices affected the entire country. American Pharaoh shows politics at its deepest level, and each chapter brings new insights into a complex man and the system he created in order to rule the city that made him. --Jill Lightner