Bill Bryson's bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, A Walk in the Woods and Notes From A Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. His acclaimed book on the history of science, A Short History Of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Society's Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoirThe Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestseller was At Home: A Short History of Private Life, and his newest book is One Summer: America 1927. He was born in the American Mid-West, and lives in the UK.