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…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

Bill Bryson

Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.
BILL BRYSON

Antibiotic Industry Pharmaceutical
I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.
BILL BRYSON

Des Moines Someone
A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world.
BILL BRYSON

Newspapers Screens World
There is no such thing, incidentally, as one kudo.
BILL BRYSON

Incidentally Such Things
Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don’t seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
BILL BRYSON

Climate Men Weather
I still had my family, or at least the remnants of a family ripped apart by divorce and then glued back together in various odd arrangements through a series of ill- advised remarriages. It was good to know I had a solid foundation.
BILL BRYSON

Arrangement Divorce Family Good Remarriage Ripped Together
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It’s not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
BILL BRYSON

Stories Use World
A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.
BILL BRYSON

Health Robust Two
But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods.
BILL BRYSON

Beneath Gained Home Sleep Stars
There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.
BILL BRYSON

Momentum Moving Want
If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors.
BILL BRYSON

Appreciation Gratitude Mountain
An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows…
BILL BRYSON

Distressing Iowa Looks Space
Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.
BILL BRYSON

Cosmopolitanism Dynamic Simultaneously Socks Suits Wealth
But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
BILL BRYSON

Country Memorable Travel
Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.
BILL BRYSON

Geologist Loss Paperweight
You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.
BILL BRYSON

Believe Hands Scientist

…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

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…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

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Popular Authors

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