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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Johan Jakob Astor left Germany for a flute-making business in London in the late C18th, and then moved to New York where he dealt in pianos, opium, furs and real estate: what glistered was i... read more
Edie's older sister attempts to understand how her younger sibling progressed from an isolated, privileged Californian childhood to become Warhol's muse.
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 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
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