Table of Contents

1. Looking to America • 2. A Coming of Age • 3. ‘The Meaning of America’ 324 ‘Have We Any Friends?’ • 5. Prosperity or Tragedy • 6. ‘Master of the Earth’ • 7. American Girls in Italy and Elsewhere • 8. Free-Enterprise Art • 9. Americanophilia • 10. On the Roads • 11. ‘Americanize Yourselves!’ • 12. Little America • 13. Astronauts and Assassins • 14. ‘I Want it to Come HERE!’ • 15. Nether Americas • 16. B-Day and Other Invasions • 17. Dialogues with Consumer Products • 18. The Campaign to Free America • 19. ‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ • 20. ‘Thanks, America’ • Acknowledgments, Index

Promotional Information

An exhilarating, provocative and hugely ambitious cultural history of America which skilfully combines analysis of cinema, popular culture and consumer culture with politics and international affairs

About the Author

Peter Conrad taught English literature at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1973 to 2011. He has written more than twenty books, including How the World Was Won: The Americanization of Everywhere; Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins; At Home in Australia; and Modern Times, Modern Places: Life and Art in the Twentieth Century, all published by Thames & Hudson.

Reviews

'Conrad is stunningly well-informed, compulsively allusive and equipped with the kind of imagination that transforms the base metal of history into pure gold' - Observer

'Marvellous … sparkling with arresting vignettes - a testament to forensic research' - Independent

'Conrad unrolls the 20th century like a giant canvas and takes us on a provocative, enjoyable romp through its quarrels, rivalries and vanities … an absorbing and highly accessible book … an affectionate, comprehensive survey of the art and popular culture of a century' - The Irish Times

'Very fine … vastly detailed and immensely subtle' - The Glasgow Herald

'A magisterial story, never before told in such an intelligent and, essentially, sympathetic manner' - Prospect