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Bought at Lisbon's book fair 2010.

Made in America is a non-fiction book about, well, America. First off, I bought this book mainly because of 3 reasons:
a) I loved Bill Bryson’s book on Shakespeare;
b) I originally thought it was more about American history and culture rather than language developments;
c) it was only 5€.
While I did get to know a lot about America that I hadn’t known before, it was a bit of a dry read at times, because it ahs countless pages on word variations. All my favourite bits included specific events in American history, because I’m a History nerd.
However, this is sort-of my fault, seeing as Bryson delivers what he promises (and very well-researched, I might add. There are several pages with references at the end of the book): an understandable study on American-English. Being Portuguese, I know some basics about American History (mostly what affected the entire world, since that’s what we learn about school), so it was definately interesting and enrichening to read about something new to me. Sadly, Bryson seemed to have forgetten that people other than Americans might read his book, since he referenced several cases that went a bit like “We all know about that fateful day when so and so did this thing and then we all know what the consequences of that were”. Well, I don’t, and I would have enjoyed if he had explained it to me.
Honestly, it’s a good book, but it is a really dry read, and unless you have a real interest in language and history, don’t read it. It’ll just be boring if you’re searching for trivia.
Read from May 15th to May 31st, 2010.