Welcome to my Book Talk by Sam Bell

Quick Facts Memoir of someone growing up in the 1950s Genre: Nonfiction Author: Bill Bryson Pages:268

Summary The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a memoir reflecting on someone's childhood growing up in the 1950s. It shows just how different life in America was back them, and how it changed throughout the decade, from the traditional values of the postwar family in the 50s, to the cultural revolutions of the 60s.

Passage #1 A section of the book is about America's cultural obsession with nuclear weapons and how there was a feeling of imminent doom around in the 1950's, but people were still acting normally: "...more than 40 percent of people in 1955 thought there would be a global disaster... in the form of a nuclear war within 5 years."

Passage #1 part 2 Half of these people thought it would be the end of humanity. But these same people, Bryson explained, could be found "busily buying new homes... investing in stocks and bonds... and generally behaving like people who expect to live a long time." This struck me as irrational but very human behavior; it's just like us to be certain of the end of days, and then turn around and do things that would be pointless if death was as close as we thought.

Passage #2 In this section, Bryson talks about the prosperity and wealth of America in the 1950s after World War II. "When the war ended, the United States $26 billion worth of factories that hadn't existed before the war, $140 billion in savings and war bonds just waiting to be spent, no bomb damage, and practically no competition." In the book there's a photo of an American family and the 2.5 tons of food the average family like them ate in a year.

Connection This connects to me in two ways. One is how secure our country feels compared to the way it felt back then. We're not constantly worried about nukes falling on our heads. The other is that we're less financially secure, though. Back then, most people were prospering, and there wasn't as big an unemployment rate as there is now.

Recommendation I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what it was like in the 1950s, during a time when instead of worrying about money and the economy, people worried about nuclear war and space travel. It's very informative about the lifestyle in the 50s, and the country's decade-long transformation from the America of then into the America of now.

Thank You! Any Questions?