As the ultra-conservative director of the FBI for nearly 50 years, Hoover is arguably more responsible for the emergence of the US far right than anyone else. Who was he? What happened?
A prelapsarian tale about a haven of racially integrated citizens, based on a real island off the coast of Maine which became - for a while - an exotic utopia in the late C18th.
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...
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.
A simple cottage that became "a Federal-style manse" complete with bowling alley and tennis pavilion. All beautifully decorated by our Nina. (Perhaps also a dojo upholstered with fabulous fl... read more
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.
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
A survey of this pioneering and serene colourist (1885-1965), who eschewed '-isms' and quietly got on with his work - much of it plein air. Early impressionistic impastos quickly give way to... read more
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.
A retrospective of Maier's extraordinary body of work, arranged thematically - self-portraits, the street, portraits, gestures, cinematography, children, etc.
A re-issue of LB's famous and very funny memoir about working in a New York Hotel. He came to the US in 1914, aged sixteen, and worked at the 'Hotel Splendide' as he called it for the next t... read more
Not just bar-room belles and pioneers wearing thin the soles of their boots on their immense journeys to the west, but Chinese laundresses and displaced native Americans too. Real stories, w... read more
Slim but far-reaching memoir of the author's brush with suicide, framed as the consequence of familial trauma and isolation. Superbly written, this bears honourable comparison with William S... read more
An epic historical novel about political and moral divides in 19th America, approached through the raucous, ill-starred family of John Wilkes Booth. By the author of We Are All Completely Be... 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
Following on from his The Prime Ministers, here is a series of essays on all 46 presidents of the USA by various academics, journalists, politicians and historians.
MG's absorbing new micro-history focuses on a Crucible-esque event in Springfield, Mass. in 1651, when a young couple were condemned by their peers as witches. Drawing on detailed primary so... read more
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 bravura upending of the clichés of the 'Great American Novel' from the author of Then We Came to the End. Set in early C21st America, Ferris's protagonist is a romantic in the style of Up... read more
A 600-page behemoth of a novel, Crossroads is a cross-generational saga set in 1970s suburban Chicago. The paterfamilias is a pastor wondering whether to leave his failing marriage before hi... read more