America

With Hymn to the Rebel Cafe (1994), Chekhov (1995) and 1968: A History in Verse (1997), Ed Sanders has developed a remarkable mode of "compacted history" (as one critic called it). Angry, wistful, defiant and extremely funny re-inventions of historical and biographical worlds, these works offer a highly original mix of chronicle, anecdote, document, reportage, paean and polemic.

In the present volume, Sanders embarks on his most ambitious project to date: an epic, neo-Herodotean finding-out-for-oneself of salient moments and movements in the public/private history of the American twentieth century. Bold, sweeping, data-retentive, rhapsodic, hilarious, heart-rendering, thought-provoking, Sanders' History adds a brilliant new poetic patch to "the story of America...a million stranded fabric / woven by billions of hands & minds".