“A literate exploration of why we use—or mangle—our native tongue.”—USA Today
Mayflower voyagers crossed an ocean without a single plow or fishing line, only to find two local braves who greeted them in fluent English. In their wake, colonial settlers cobbled together an inventive new vocabulary from borrowings, misnomers, and daily necessity.
Colonists preserved sturdy British terms that London discarded and adopted native words like skunk and caucus, building an eccentric social landscape of everyday American speech.
Bill Bryson celebrates America’s magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood…and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap “Macaroni.”
Word Origins: From Dutch sailors offering "scow" and "caboose" to short-order hash slingers shouting "Adam and Eve on a raft," uncover how daily necessity and immigrant slang reshaped modern speech.
Founding Fathers: Revisit Philadelphia in 1776, where Thomas Jefferson lifted the phrase "pursuit of happiness" from John Locke and stubbornly defended writing the possessive "it’s" with an apostrophe.
American Pop Culture: Trace the rise of roadside leisure across two-lane highways, from the first drive-in Pig Stand in Texas to Burma-Shave jingles and the original Milestone Mo-tel in California.
American History: Witness the marvels and mishaps of Yankee know-how, including Alexander Graham Bell using a crude metal detector to locate President Garfield’s assassin bullet, only to read the bedsprings.
Also by This Author: The Mother Tongue.
