Bill Bryson April 20, 2009

BILL BRYSON is the best-selling author of a number of wildly diverse nonfiction works, including The Lost Continent, a hilarious travel book detailing a trip in his mother's Chevy around small-town America; The Mother Tongue, an encyclopedic journey through the English language from Neanderthal man to the present; and A Short History of Nearly Everything, his wryly observant journey through the universe, which The New York Times calls "stylish and stunningly accurate ... destined to become a modern classic of science writing." Bryson has also written a memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 50s and 60s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, which Tom Brokaw calls "a national treasure." His other works include A Walk in the Woods, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, In a Sunburned Country, and his latest work, Shakespeare: The World as Stage, a lively biography of the Bard. Bryson currently lives in England, where he was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his contributions to literature.