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{{infoboxsortinfobox1
|title=The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
|sort=Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=416
|publisher=Black Swan
|date=June 2007
|isbn=978-0552772549
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>0552772542</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=0552772542|aznus=<amazonus>076791936X</amazonus>
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When Bill Bryson was a boy, he used to watch tornados ripping across the horizon from the safety of his grandfather's farm. A twister would sometimes threaten to head their way, but never did. "We didn't know it at the time," he writes, "but it was killing people as it went."
It helped that he grew up Iowa. A landlocked agrarian island, its friendly folk belonged to a bygone age even then. In ''The Thunderbolt Kid'', Bryson describes it all with a wistful affection. His - and America's - innocence were to be short-lived. But in the meantime, there were comic books to read, giant fridges to buy and TV shows to watch.
Bryson does well to extract 400 mainly entertaining pages from a happy, uneventful, affluent childhood. Mercifully, his parents - both journalists - were endowed with numerous mild eccentricities. And Bryson's taste for smut is as undiminished here as in his peerless first two books, [[''The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America]]'', and [[''Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe]]''.
There are hilarious tales involving the glass jars that his mother kept under the sink for last-minute expulsions of 'toity' (the family euphemism for urine). His father's penchant for assembling midnight snacks while wearing nothing but a t-shirt also gives rise to deliciously embarrassing moments.
And he does succeed. But these passages inevitably feel like footnotes to his ostensible subject matter.
The book ends on an elegiac note, mourning the loss of individuality in the surrender of towns like his birthplace, Des Moines to the marching homogenisation of commerce and culture. But at the same time, we know that as soon as he could, Bryson fled his home state for the more bohemian delights of Europe. This suggests that his view of fifties America is somewhat rose-tinted and, as in his book of antipodean travels [[''Down Under]]'', the desire not to offend gets the better of his wit.
However, not wanting want to risk a vaporisation, I'd stress that Bryson's underlying geniality still makes him hard to dislike. And while many might feel that he covered the same territory much better in ''The Lost Continent'', most Bryson fans will find comfort and joy in the cosy, amiable glow of these recollections.
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