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Bezig met laden... To America with Lovedoor A. A. Gill
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. A collection of essays about Gill's high regard for America, its people and achievements. Gill is a famous London columnist with a huge audience, and it's an unusual and refreshing change to have a Brit not only say he likes Americans, but has traveled across America and knows the history, not just the current politics. This isn't fawning, he states what he sees as cultural flaws or quirks while pointing out the good. My favorite essays were "Stupid", in which he delivers a scathing rebuttal to both Brits and Europeans who regard Americans as uncultured and uneducated, and "Sparks", about the battle for electrical supremacy in America that Thomas Edison won by killing hundreds of animals, which led to the invention of the electric chair. 4.5 stars geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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"In TO AMERICA WITH LOVE, celebrated British provocateur and Vanity Fair columnist A. A. Gill traverses the Atlantic to become the freshest chronicler of American identity in recent memory. With a fiery temper, a 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 wild stories and startling facts along the way. From Colorado, where he meets a local vegetation expert and learns which flowers were in Pocahontas's nuptial bouquet, to Kentucky, where he visits the Creationist Museum and drinks moonshine with a hog farmer, and to Harlem, where he misses a turn and stumbles into the wrong barbershop for a once-in-a-lifetime haircut, Gill embarks on a tour of not only the nation's landscape but also its psyche, playing adventurer, philosopher, statistician, and raconteur all at once. In inimitable fashion he explains why pressing a button in a Manhattan elevator means entering 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 is the metaphysical marketplace for movies, the place where Americans are sold on American romance and taught how to dream the American dream. Weaving together a tapestry of historical erudition and outrageous anecdotes, Gill ultimately captures the scope and spirit of a nation that started off as a conceptual experiment and became a political, scientific, and cultural fortress. This humorous and revelatory book shows us why we are who we are by transforming ordinary experiences into extraordinary lessons and promising to never let us look in the mirror the same way again"--
"Celebrated British provocateur and Vanity Fair columnist A. A. Gill traverses the Atlantic to become the freshest chronicler of American identity in recent memory. With a fiery temper, a 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 wild stories and startling facts along the way. From Colorado, where he meets a local vegetation expert and learns which flowers were in Pocahontas' nuptial bouquet, to Kentucky, where he visits the Creationist Museum and drinks moonshine with a hog farmer, and 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. In inimitable fashion, he explains why pressing a button in a Manhattan elevator means entering 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 is the metaphysical marketplace for movies, the place where Americans are sold on American romance and taught how to dream the American dream. Weaving together a tapestry of historical erudition and outrageous anecdotes, Gill ultimately captures the scope and spirit of a nation that started off as a conceptual experiment and became a political, scientific, and cultural fortress. This humorous and revelatory book shows us why we are who we are, transforming ordinary experiences into extraordinary lessons and promising to never let us look in the mirror in the same way again"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)917.304History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in North America United States TravelLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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This attempt to explain the growth of modern America to a British audience falls short. The idea of aligning stories from a family scrapbook of distant US relations with the growth of a nation and his own interactions with it seems like a good framework, but it somehow didn’t work.
In the end I think both he as an author who has emotional ties to America, and me as a reader who has adopted it as my home, were too close to the subject to give the text the impartial observer viewpoint it deserved.. ( )