In the late eighties, a tireless traveler and writer named Bill Bryson set out to map the world and explore what it means to be human and how people live. With a witty, irresistible humor, he decided it was time to come home. He didn’t want to wander forever. He simply longed to retrace the journey through the country he had left a decade earlier, the United States, the land where he felt he truly belonged as soon as he set foot there. The plan was to travel from coast to coast, stopping in small towns and modest cities, beginning where he was born and raised in Des Moines, a place he remembers as calm, ordinary, and quietly reliable.
It’s in Des Moines, Iowa, the heart of the American Midwest, a city conjured in many minds as a string of diners, charming cafes with kiosks, scattered gas stations, and a single, quiet main street. Bryson’s journey is built around the idea of traveling with his childhood memories, the road trips he took in the family car during summers with a father who loved sports but disliked paying for everything. Readers who join him are taken to nearly every town he visits. It’s worth noting that the book in question, The Lost Continent, originally appeared in Spain under the title ¡Menuda América! and later found its way to English-language readers through Mondadori in 1994.
Beyond the familiar waitresses and motels—the latter emerging as the true protagonists of the narrative—The Lost Continent elevates travel as a central thread in North American culture. The journey also explores the idea that many towns honor writers who grew up there. In Bryson’s itinerary, Chicago’s Mark Twain connection to Hartford, Connecticut, and William Faulkner’s ties to Oxford, Mississippi, stand out as memorable stops. Among the many sites, the Henry Ford Museum often captures the imagination: a place that houses not only houses but also artifacts from America’s industrial age, including the final breath of Thomas Edison and the famous limousine believed to have carried John F. Kennedy.
Henry Ford Museum
During his visit, Bryson wanders among eight houses relocated by Ford into a sprawling garden, each moved with care and authenticity rather than as simple replicas. The collection includes Edison’s residence, as well as the stately homes of tire magnate Harvey Firestone and the early chapters of American leadership, such as George Washington. The reader accompanies Bryson as he follows the thread of how everyday spaces shape the larger American story and how that story is shared with others. The late Austro-Hungarian writer Ludwig Bemelmans is remembered for making places come alive on the page, underscoring the idea that a setting can become the main character of a book.
New York before the Great Depression
In the evocative Hotel Splendide (Gatopardo Ediciones), Bemelmans revisits his days as a waiter at New York’s opulent Ritz before the 1929 crash, a period defined by glitter and excess. The narrative treats a chorus of colorful customers—elegant and sometimes indulged—alongside the people who kept a grand city running. There are waiters, magicians, patient servers, musicians, cartoonists, and ambitious dishwashers who could retire with a lucky hand. The atmosphere captures a city at once dazzling and lived-in, where every encounter adds texture to a wider story.
More than a good artist
Bemelmans, like Nathanael West, was a writer who found his true voice through observation and humor. Born in 1898 and passing in 1962, Bemelmans is remembered for his children’s books—most notably a popular series featuring a girl named Madeline—yet he also produced memoirs and illustrated works that reveal the person behind the pen. Those memoirs, including titles that explore life in bustling hotels, reflect how a single setting can anchor a broad narrative. In these works, Bemelmans paints a vivid picture of people who crisscross the same shared space—hotels where whimsy, wit, and a touch of chaos can define a whole era.