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"In 1934, at the peak of the Great Depression, A. G. Macdonell embarked on a journey across America. This travelogue is the deliciously scathing product of that adventure: a vivid and unflinchingly honest record of life in the cities and the slums, on the roads, railways, and the vast open plains. ""The hot breath of the Apocalyptic Horsemen is on my neck, and I still wake up on occasions in peaceful England, cold with terror from the dream that I am once again upon the road."" By the time he departed for America, Macdonell was an international celebrity, and as such, he was afforded a privileged glimpse into both the glamour and the gritty reality of 1930s America. With brutal humour he glides effortlessly between lavish dinners and dances at the Plaza Hotel, passionate football games comparable to the 'less pleasing features' of the First World War, and the humbling 'Spirit of the Pioneers' buried deep within the poverty-stricken cattle ranges of Montana. While his descriptions can be savage and mocking, Macdonell is also affectionate, compassionate, and startlingly insightful.In A Visit to America, he gamely captures all that is beautiful and repulsive about a country gripped in economic turmoil; fascinating and timeless, it is an indulgence not to be missed."

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9781781550328

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A. G. Macdonell, (1895-1941) was a journalist and satirical novelist. Without doubt his best-known work was England Their England, but the success of this overshadows his other books, many of which were classics in their own way. The Autobiography of a Cad must surely rank as one of the funniest books ever written and Lords and Masters is a cutting and hard-hitting satire with frightening prescience, foreseeing the Second World War as inevitable. His American trip in 1934 is amusingly related in A Visit to America, but his other non-fiction is also powerful and beautifully written, with his highly-regarded Napoleon and his Marshals providing one of the best accounts of the Napoleonic Wars in one single volume.

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