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A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America
on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
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- Paperback: 304 pages ; Dimensions (in inches):
0.81 x 8.02 x 5.30
- Publisher: Broadway Books; Reprint edition (May
4, 1999)
- ISBN: 0767902521
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Book Description
Back in
America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint
himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail,
which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape
of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius
of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic
silliness of his fellow human beings.
For a start there's
the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the
walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and
Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet
a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters.
But A Walk in the Woods
is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness
to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history,
he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness.
An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is
destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.
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Bill Bryson has made a living out of
traveling and then writing about it. In The Lost Continent he re-created
the road trips of his childhood; in Neither Here nor There he retraced
the route he followed as a young backpacker traversing Europe. When this
American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell
walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small
Island.
Once back
on American soil and safely settled in New Hampshire, Bryson once again
hears the siren call of the open road--only this time it's a trail. The
Appalachian Trail, to be exact. In A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson
tackles what is, for him, an entirely new subject: the American wilderness.
Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out
one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles
to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin.
If nothing else, A Walk in the Woods is proof positive
that the journey is the destination. As Bryson and Katz haul their
out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated
to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail,
the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Whether you
plan to make a trip like this one yourself one day or only care to read
about it, A Walk in the Woods is a great way to spend an afternoon.
--Alix Wilber
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From the Back Cover
"Choke-on-your-coffee
funny."
--The Washington Post Book World
"Bryson is . . . great company right
from the start--a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as
equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and . . . Dave Barry."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A Walk in the Woods is an
almost perfect travel book."
--The Boston Globe
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