I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

by Bill Bryson

A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body.

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

• ISBN10: 076790382X
• ISBN13: 9780767903820
• Publish Date: 6 June 2000 (first published 4 May 1999)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 9 September 2010
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780767903820

Reviews

[ibeforem]

Is there such a thing as a Bill Bryson book that isn’t entertaining? This one is a collection of newspaper columns written for a British newspaper once Bryson returned home to the U.S. The book was published in 2000, and the columns were published prior to that, so a few of them now read as dated (like a few comments about the state of pre-9/11 air travel). But not as many as you might think. There was only one that I didn’t care for, and it was an entire fake tax return. It may have been funny in print, but it didn’t translate well over audio. I wouldn’t consider this book to be as educational as some of his other efforts, but it was a fun listen.