The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a fantastic memoir of what life was like growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s for Bill Bryson. And as far as I'm concerned, despite a 30 year difference, it's not much different than what it was like growing up for me just a bit farther up Interstate 35 in the Twin Cities.

With each page I turned I felt as though I swam a lap in my own memory. The book helped me recall so much of my own childhood that I found it quite difficult to put down. T...