TL;DR: Old man yells at cloud.

I really enjoyed all of Bryson's past travelogues, but the tone of this book is just super grumpy and unfunny. He spends most of his time complaining about how things were better in the good ol' days, and making pointless, negative hyperbolic statements about everything. Every time I tried to make progress in this book it felt like a chore, and was the first Bryson book that I've put down without finishing.