It had to happen. After books about individual decades came books about individual years. Now we get the book about a single season. Bill Bryson's "One Summer" is the story of just four months — June to September 1927 — in the life of America. Four crucial months, needless to say — four months in which, Bryson contends, his homeland came to dominate the world in everything from banking to baseball and talkies to telly.
In anyone else's hands, it should be said, this book could be an almighty mess — a circus without a ringmaster. But few writers of nonfiction, and, let's be honest, few enough writers of novels, can crack the narrative whip like Bryson. "One Summer" fairly whirls along. Bryson moves his cast of colorful characters around with such silky efficiency you don't mind that too many of them aren't doing anything very interesting.