The story of the first contact between the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific North West with Europeans - and what came after. Told very powerfully in a graphic form that comb... read more
The veteran journalist reviews the current US presidency, in all its baffling volatility, basing himself on several exclusive interviews and a wealth of documentary evidence.
Edie's older sister attempts to understand how her younger sibling progressed from an isolated, privileged Californian childhood to become Warhol's muse.
A portrait of the utopia created by Eugene O'Neill, de Kooning, Josef and Anni Albers, Emma Goldman, Mary McCarthy, Edward Hopper, Walter Gropius and many others.
If you want to read one book about inequality and its ramifications for all societies, now and in the past, let it be this. By a former Pulitzer winner.
A furniture salesman, who tries to keep to the straight and narrow with only the occasional foray into fencing a pilfered gewgaw for a cousin, finds himself drawn into a much bigger heist. A... read more
In a silty blend of ecology and economics, ALT takes the matsutake mushroom – the most valuable mushroom in the world, comfortable in ravaged landscapes - as a metaphor for the intricate n... read more
The much-anticipated new novel from the author of A Gentleman in Moscow. Three ex-cons and one teenager attempt to make their way from Kansas to San Francisco. A paean to the American West o... read more
This glorious tapestry of a novel returns to Taylor's accustomed stomping ground - the university campus - with whisper-close third-person narration and minute observation worthy of his reve... read more
Brought up in North Carolina in the Jim Crow era, AT won a postgraduate scholarship to Brown University, worked at Warhol's Factory and volunteered for Diana Vreeland. He went on to become e... read more
A singular, haunting coming-of-age story set in the Canadian Arctic, in which myth and savage reality blur into each other. An acclaimed debut by an Inuk author.
Executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, a crime of which she was almost certainly innocent. This is a valuable book on 'The American Dreyfus Affair... read more
Joseph Seligman arrived in the US with $100 sewn into the lining of his clothes; the Lehman brothers followed; then Marcus Goldman and the 'forty-eighters' fleeing European anti-semitism. A ... read more
Scanlan's prose is pared back to the bone in this slim novel about an Iowa horse trainer and the scuzzy, feverish world of racing with its trailers and motels...
The stunning new installation of the Frick's collection of Old Masters etc in Marcel Breuer's Brutalist bulding a few blocks away from its usual home, now in the process of restoration. Beau... read more
From his early figurative work to his late colour field paintings. The text is by Rothko's children, with contributions by the art historian Alexander Nemerov, and by Hiroshi Sugimoto, the J... read more
This extraordinary Californian garden was the creation of Ganna Walska, a Polish opera singer who bought the estate of Montecito in 1943 while briefly married to her sixth husband. Thereafte... read more
Connecting with her sequence 'Gilead', 'Home' and 'Lila', this new novel concerns the family's errant son Jack, the intelligent, drunk, courteous, poetry-loving, foolish ne'er-do-well. Aspir... read more
Better known perhaps as a writer (Invisible Man, 1952), Ellison was also a fine photographer, who turned his camera as well as his pen on everyday life in America, especially the Black exper... read more
A mysterious philanthropist travels up and down a stretch of Canadian coast delivering books to people who live too far from libraries. This novella was first published in 1933.
Where did refugees from the American and French Revolutions go? This remarkable historical perspective shows how opening doors can be more profitable than closing borders.
Another outing for Inspector Gamache, the Quebecois investigator - crowd control, social manipulation and a charismatic academic touting dangerous ideas lead inevitably to murder most foul.
A detailed, careful attempt to understand the changes in the United States over the last decade that sees Trump's election not so much as the cause of fracture but rather as the bitter fruit... read more
A green macaw who likes murmuring to itself is one of a trio of characters caught up together in the pandemic; the others are a middle-aged professor and a young drop-out. A novel of unlikel... read more
A many-layered memoir from the Pulitzer-winning author of The Sympathizer: the American dream, the Vietnam War, the life of the refugee, adoption, violence, identity.
A retrospective of Maier's extraordinary body of work, arranged thematically - self-portraits, the street, portraits, gestures, cinematography, children, etc.
A lively account of the origins of the American Dream - an idea which Moore traces back across the Atlantic to the intellectual and political bustling of Enlightenment Britain.
Argues that today's Sino-American rivalry in micro-processing is as important in geopolitical terms as the economics of oil was at the time of the first Gulf War.
On the face of it, this is a novel about a diver and a sunken jet - but it doesn't really matter what it's about: once again, McCarthy has delivered an utterly stupendous piece of writing.
Matar's photographs at sites of lethal police violence in the US and her fastidious research make for a quietly devastating critique. The formality of her images and the directness of her g... read more
Bridges was an American painter(1834-1923). Her oddly static pictures of birds and flowers were celebrated during her lifetime and display a startling intensity.
Madison quietly set about creating a revolution in vegetarian cooking at Greens restaurant in San Francisco; she'd also done time at Chez Panisse. First published in 1987, this excellent boo... read more
Although not well known in the UK, Lewis is one of the best conteporary US novelists. This, set on the coast of Maine, is a sort of parable of contemporary American society.
Cars, guns, computers etc have stopped working. Safe in rural Maine, the protagonists are visited by an old acquaintance in a retro-fitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. It can'... read more
A wickedly funny portrait of a group of liberal New Yorkers. Appalled by the political catastrophe of 2016, they think they are safe in their nice homes...
Published last year in the US, this account of the rich in mid-C20th New York, and Capote's multiple betrayals of friendships, is both fascinating and shocking.