Is there any American abroad more entertaining in his

dissection of England than Bill Bryson?

I don't think so, which is why we're so happy to have him join us to talk about his new book,

The Road to Little Dribbling.

You know, every country has to sit in and out of fashion.

But business really, you know, it's fundamentally it's the same place it was when I first came to a 40 years ago.

Can we possibly learn to live distraction free?

Our help desk colonist, Molly Young, will be here to talk about several new books

that unbelievably seem to suggest we can.

When you talk about productivity, it's a little bit like talking about efficiency,

where it really isn't a sort of virtue in itself.

It sort of matters very much what you apply it to or what sort of project you're tackling.

Jenny Schussler will give us an update from the literary world,

and great coals has bestseller news.

This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

Bill Bryson joins us now from Hampshire, England,

to talk about his new book, The Road to Little Dribbling,

Adventures of an American in Britain. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, I'm delighted to be with you.

So it's hard to start talking about this book without mentioning another book

that you wrote 20 years ago, Notes from a Small Island.

When you look back at that book today, how would you describe that?

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