Shakespeare

At first glance, Bill Bryson seems an odd choice to write this addition to the Eminent Lives series.

The author of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid isn’t, after all, a Shakespeare scholar, a playwright, or even a biographer.

Reading Shakespeare: The World As Stage, however, one gets the sense that this eclectic Iowan is exactly the type of person the Bard himself would have selected for the task.

The man who gave us The Mother Tongue and A Walk in the Woods approaches Shakespeare with the same freedom of spirit and curiosity that made those books such reader favorites. A refreshing take on an elusive literary master.