A celebrated British provocateur and Vanity Fair columnist serves up an "immensely entertaining book inspired by his love and knowledge of America" (Sunday Times, London).From Tocqueville to Sacha Baron Cohen, sometimes it takes an outsider to show us who we really are. In To America With Love, acclaimed British humorist A.A. Gill traverses the Pond to become the freshest chronicler of American identity in recent memory. With a fiery temper, sharp-tongued wit, and an insatiable curiosity to figure out what makes more than 300 million of the world's population tick, Gill traces the history and logic of our nation's habits, collecting fascinating stories and startling facts along the way. From Kentucky, where he visits the Creationist Museum and drinks moonshine with a hog farmer, to Harlem, where he misses a turn and stumbles into the wrong barber shop for a once-in-a-lifetime haircut, Gill embarks on a tour not only of the nation's landscape but also its psyche, playing adventurer, philosopher, statistician, and raconteur all at once. The result is arresting, unique, and often hilarious. In inimitable fashion, he explains why pressing a button in a Manhattan elevator means entering into a social contract of American etiquette and inverting conventional hierarchies of space; why browsing through Playboy centerfolds becomes the perfect litmus test for a generation's political views; and how Hollywood has become the place where Americans are taught how to dream the American dream. "As craftily observant and intelligently witty as ever" (Esquire, UK), Gill ultimately captures the scope and spirit of a nation that began as a conceptual experiment and became a political, scientific, and cultural fortress. To America With Love shows us why we are who we are--and reminds us why it is, after all, great to be an American.
