Growing Up Simple: An Irreverent Look at Kids in the 1950s

While the author was growing up in Austin, I was growing up in Houston. It was amazing how similar life was in Texas' largest city and Texas' capitol city. The 50's were a wonderful time to be a kid - prosperity reigned and the world was (mostly) at peace. The book really captures the spirit of those years and brought back a wonderful era in a personal, humorous and fun manner.

This is one of the funniest books I have read in a while. It brings back such fond memories of my own child hood. Growing up in Texas was much simpler then and seems to be much more fun than the kids are having today. It's a must read for anyone over 50.

I loved this book. The chapter called "Too Little To Be President" alone is worth the price of the whole book. And if you can't laugh out loud at the tales of teenage boys delivering new school buses all over Texas, you need to up your meds!

This book is fun to read. It's that SIMPLE! Others more sophisticated in methods of evaluation like it, too: --It won the Violet Crown Award from Barnes & Noble as the best nonfiction book of 2003, --It received the IPPY Humor Award from the Independent Publishers Book Awards as the funniest book published in North America in 2003, and --Texas Public Relations Association (TPRA) presented its author, George Arnold, the highly coveted Silver Spur Award for marketing excellence.

If you like Mark Twain, you'll love George Arnold. This "nonfiction novel," kept me, a Mexican American female who grew up in 60s and 70s Texas, thoroughly entertained and laughing. Arnold has a real knack for telling stories. The "rabid reader" who gave only a one-star review for this book and called it "self-indulgent" proves that reading alot does not make one an astute reader. It's a memoir for crying out loud! "Growing Up Simple" won numerous awards--2003 Violet Crown Award for Best Nonfiction, the 2003 IPPY Book Award and the TPRA Silver Spur--for good reason. I heartily recommend it.