Bill Bryson Coming to Decatur in October
Decatur Metro | September 19, 2013The author onslaught continues!! Jim C pointed out this article in a recent First Baptist Church newsletter (page 5) about a visit from renowned author Bill Bryson on October 11th.
Bill Bryson, acclaimed nonfiction writer, will speak about his new book, One Summer: America, 1927 on October 11 at 7 p.m. in the FBCD sanctuary. The doors will open at 6 p.m. Bryson’s appearance is sponsored by the FBCD Conversations Ministry in connection with the Georgia Center for the Book, and is free to the public.One Summer transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 included the following events:
- • Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop.
- • Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record; he hit his 60th on September 30.
- • Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation.
- • Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record.
- • The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin.
- • Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
- • The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption.
- • The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer”, was filmed
- • The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.
All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.