Bill Bryson makes you feel like you are sitting next to someone telling you some stories about the summer of 1927 instead of listening to some dry, boring historian.  And some fairly momentous events happened that summer.  Most of the events I knew a little about but much less than I thought such as Charles Lindbergh's historic flight from New York to Paris in the Spirit of St Louis.  And about Prohibition in Chicago and Al Capone.  Some events I had never heard about like the massive flooding all over the Midwest.  This overview of 1927 includes plenty of background on the events and the individuals involved, so you don't need to know much beforehand.  If you enjoy baseball, you'll like reading about the amazing season the New York Yankees had and Babe Ruth in particular.  I seriously dislike the Yankees but since this was 87 years ago, even I can feel good about their accomplishments.  One Summer was just as enjoyable as all of the other books by Bill Bryson I've ever read.

This only gets two stars based on a couple of different things.  I took stars away because too much of this book pretty much bored me to tears.  It was so slow in the parts where George Smiley is essentially acting as a detective.  Is there a mole in the British Centre intelligence office or not?  And if so, who is the mole?  That sounds interesting but he plods through reports with excruciating thoroughness, and the reader has to plod through all the information in those reports with him.  Then I took away another star because there are just so many people involved in the various stories that it is hard to keep track.  I was a full third of the way through the novel before I felt like I had a glimmer of understanding of what was going on, and it was only a glimmer not full understanding. 

I’ve seen quite a few other reviews that noted that this novel is slow but they still enjoyed reading it.  Slow parts don’t necessarily kill a story for me, but in this case it detracted from the overall enjoyment so much, I can’t rate it highly.  I enjoyed The Spy Who Came in From the Cold despite its lack of action, and I had high hopes for Tinker as well, but I probably won’t try any more Le Carré novels since this is obviously his typical style.  However, if you enjoy intricately plotted spy novels and don’t require much action at all, Le Carré will probably be just the author for you