The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1999) constitutes author Bill Bryson's first of many travel books. It details Bryson's nearly fourteen-thousand mile car journey, which started in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa and took Bryson all around the country -- from towns near the Mississippi River to the Deep South, California, and New England. Along the way, Bryson made humorous observations of the town and culture (humorous observations which make up most of the book).
Bryson took the trip after returning to America after a long period in England and after his father died, both of which informed some of the observations he made in the book.
Upon release, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America received middling -- leaning negative -- reviews. Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Michele Slung offered up a less-than-glowing review, writing "Unlike Ian Frazier, whose curiosity marches in tandem with his imagination and whose splendid book ''Great Plains'' offers fewer states but almost twice the mileage, Mr. Bryson stops to ask very few questions, so his sense of wonder is as dead as a frozen battery. It's unfortunate, but once the joyless tone of ''The Lost Continent'' is set, one has the sensation of being the sort of hitchhiker found usually in the Twilight Zone - locked in a car with a boor at the wheel and the radio tuned to static." Kirkus Reviews offered up a more positive review, writing that "Bryson is a smooth writer, only far too smug and self-consciously cranky; still, his account is funny al times, insightful at others. But for a mine mature, wise, and winsome American odyssey by another expatriate, see Mort Rosenblum's excellent Back Home." It's fair to say that many reviewers thought The Lost Continent was a middling book. It will certainly not be remembered among Bryson's best works (which include books like A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything).
