導讀： 簡介: 作者介紹比爾·布萊森(Bill Bryson)是當今英語世界非常多產且又“最能逗樂”的游記作家之一，鋒頭之健不亞於當年的“披頭士”樂隊(據從互聯網上查得之Powells．com對布萊森的訪問 簡介:


作者介紹
　　比爾·布萊森(Bill Bryson)是當今英語世界非常多產且又“最能逗樂”的游記作家之一，鋒頭之健不亞於當年的“披頭士”樂隊(據從互聯網上查得之Powells．com對布萊森的訪問記。訪員Dave Weich稱，在書店曾見排名前二十五位的暢銷書，其中布氏一人的作品即占五種。
　　他的作品诙諧嘲谑的風格堪稱一絕，整體上舉重若輕，能讓普通讀者產生很強的認同感，不失為雅俗共賞的典范，深受讀者喜愛，也獲得很高的評價。每部作品均高踞美國、英國、加拿大暢銷排行榜前茅。
布萊森擅長用不同的眼光來看待他所游歷的世界，在他的書裡，英國式的睿智幽默與美國式的搞笑絕妙地融合在了一起。他的尖刻加上他的博學，讓他的文字充滿了幽默、機敏和智慧，使他自己成為“目前活在世上的最有趣的旅游文學作
開頭部分：
Beginning…
Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.
A sign announced that this was no ordinary footpath but the celebrated Appalachian Trail. Running more than 2,100 miles along America's eastern seaboard, through the serene and beckoning Appalachian Mountains, the AT is the granddaddy of long hikes. From Georgia to Maine, it wanders across fourteen states, through plump, comely hills' whose very names--Blue Ridge, Smokies, Cumberlands, Green Mountains, White Mountains-- seem an invitation to amble. Who could say the words Great Smoky Mountains or Shenandoah Valley and not feel an urge, as the naturalist John Muir once put it, to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence ?
And here it was, quite unexpectedly, meandering in a dangerously beguiling fashion through the pleasant New England community in which I had just settled. It seemed such an extraordinary notion--that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: Sounds neat! Let's do it!
I formed a number of rationalizations. It would get me fit after years of waddlesome sloth. It would be an interesting and reflective way to reacquaint myself with the scale and beauty of my native land after nearly twenty years of living abroad. It would be useful (I wasn't quite sure in what way, but I was sure nonetheless) to learn to fend for myself in the wilderness. When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer have to feel like such a cupcake. I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, Yeah, I've shit in the woods.
And there was a more compelling reason to go.
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