“Happily,” Bryson writes, “we were indestructible. We didn’t need seat belts, air bags, smoke detectors, bottled water, or the Heimlich maneuver.” Listening to Bill Bryson as he reads, with some relish, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, one is struck by the idea that he must have sent off for one of those Hypnosis Kits he found in the back of comic books in the 1950s. His voice is soothing and plesant but seems to be hiding something. It’s a slightly confusing account of what it was like being a rich kid in Iowa in the 1950s. There…