Made in America by Bill Bryson. 

5/5 rating. 

Book #86 of 2019. Read July 15, 2019.

Probably the most interesting book I have ever read! Half history and half interesting facts with a good amount of literary history. I read the entire book saying, “Huh, I didn’t know that!” You’ll want to read this next to someone to share all of the interesting facts you just learned. 

Quotes:

“Nor, it should be noted, was the much-vaunted right of the people to keep and bear arms ever intended as a carte blanche, semidivine injunction to invest in a private arsenal for purposes of sport and personal defense, as the full sentence makes clear: ‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.’ The framers had in mind only the idea of raising a defense force at short notice. If they did favor the idea of keeping guns for shooting animals and household intruders, they never said so.”

“We do know, however, the derivation of Missouri’s current slogan, the Show Me State. The expression was coined as an insult by outsiders and was meant to suggest that Missourians were so stupid that they had to be shown how to do everything. The state’s inhabitants, however, contrarily took it as a compliment, persuading themselves that it implied a certain shrewd caution on their part.”

“Altogether, as Howard Zinn notes, the United States made four hundred treaties with the Indians and broke every one of them.”

“If one attitude can be said to characterize America’s regard for immigration over the past two hundred years it is the belief that while immigration was unquestionably a wise and prescient thing in the case of one’s parents or grandparents, it really ought to stop now.”

“Thanks to all that hard work, the United States produces twice the goods and services per person that it produced in 1948. Everyone in the country could, in principle at least, work a four-hour day or a six-month year and still maintain a standard of living equivalent to that enjoyed by our parents. Almost uniquely among the developed nations, America took none of its productivity gains in additional leisure. It bought consumer items instead.”

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