Made in America, by Bill Bryson (Black Swan, £7.99 in UK)
This book really should carry some sort of health warning on the cover, for once you open it, it's too late - you will be instantly, irrevocably addicted. And then for the next several weeks, you will - without warning, and in the most unexpected of places - blurt out as many of Bryson's devilishly fascinating facts as you can remember.
Going to the movies? Ah, yes, you will whisper to your companion as the credits begin to roll, but remember the 1929 Taming of the Shrew, which contained one of the most memorable credits in screen history? "By William Shakespeare," it declared, "with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor." Going to the supermarket will remind you that trolleys were invented in Chicago in 1936, and that customers were at first so reluctant to use them that the shop owner was obliged to employ half a dozen people to push them around all day, pretending to shop. Got a bug in your computer? The term was coined in 1945, when the operators of a giant US Navy computer, mystified by an unexplained breakdown, searched behind the wretched thing and found a moth crushed between the points of an electrical relay switch. As for expressions like "OK", "phoney", "crook" and (hey, did you know that "gringo" isn't a New World word at all, but was a common term of abuse in 18th-century Spain, a corruption of "griego", meaning "Greek", as in "it's all Greek to me"?) their origins are often a matter of some debate, and they're debated here with enthusiasm and wit. Bryson is usually at his best when he turns his wit upon himself, but here he turns it on the whole of American language and popular culture from the Pilgrims to Silicon Valley, and presents a formidable array of data with the delight of a demented trainspotter - and the panache of a brilliant comic writer.
