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American Interior
American Interior
Oct 6, 2024 2:19 PM

Author:Gruff Rhys

American Interior

American Interior is a psychedelic historical travelogue from Welsh pop legend Gruff Rhys.

In 1792, John Evans, a twenty-two-year-old farmhand from Snowdonia, Wales, travelled to America to discover whether there was indeed, as widely believed, a tribe of Welsh-speaking native Americans still walking the great plains.

In 2012, Gruff Rhys set out on an 'investigative concert tour' in the footsteps of John Evans, with concerts in New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis, North Dakota and more.

American Interior is the story of these journeys. It is also an exploration of how wild fantasies interact with hard history and how myth-making can inspire humans to partake in crazy, vain pursuits of glory, including exploration, war and the creative arts.

Gruff Rhys is known around the world for his work as a solo artist as well as singer and songwriter with Super Furry Animals and Neon Neon, and for his collaborations with Gorillaz, Dangermouse, Sparklehorse, Mogwai and Simian Mobile Disco amongst others. The latest album by Neon Neon, Praxis Makes Perfect, based on the life of radical Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was recently performed as an immersive live concert with National Theatre Wales.

Reviews

A joyous and poignant celebration of the mythical and the real

—— Caught by the River

A charming and entertainingly written book

—— Independent

The most comprehensive study yet of this strange historical figure

—— Sunday Express

Written in an exuberant, entertaining style, American Interior is alive to the quixotic nature of Evans's quest, while offering a sideways look at the nexus between history and myth

—— Financial Times

A story about gullibility, contradiction, ambition, inexplicable wanderlust . . . this brilliantly life-affirming book highlights a world of wonder far beyond orthodox history

—— John Harris , Guardian

The vividness of life is also superbly drawn with exchanges between Mak, and many of the people that he meets on the journey. There are also copious notes and research used to back up many of the points that Mak makes, and how they relate to both Steinbeck’s times, and how things are now.

—— Ben Macnair , Nudge

Winner of the National Book Award

—— Prizes and awards

With his usual meticulous research, Ferguson is master of all his work surveys. At least as important, he writes in an unobtrusive but compelling style that carries the reader along with unforced ease. Even on its own, the first volume of Ferguson's life of Kissinger is a great work about a great man by - it has to be admitted - a great historian. It should be read, and enjoyed, by every serious student of the history of our times

—— Sherard Cowper-Coles , Spectator

For big, bold and compelling, it is impossible to ignore Kissinger - 1923-1968: the idealist (Allen Lane), the first volume of Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger, which asks us to reconsider America's best-known "realist" as more Kantian than Machiavellian, more Castlereagh than Meternich, at least up to 1968, when President Nixon first granted the Harvard academic high office.

—— John Bew , New Statesman

Some might question whether Ferguson really needs 1000 pages to tell half of Kissinger's life. Other will revel in the wealth of detail on this most controversial of American statesman

—— Bee Wilson , Sunday Times

a formidably detailed, closely argued study of the making of one of the giants of 20th-century foreign policy

—— Gideon Rachman , FT

Mark Binelli has succeeded in synthesizing the tragedy and absurdity that Detroiters face each and every day in America’s fastest shrinking city. Yes, things are dire in Motor City, but Binelli refuses to perform an autopsy on a place that still radiates rage, pride, hustle, and hope. Detroit, he discovers, is very much alive

—— Heidi Ewing, director of Detropia

Before turning the buffalo (or the artists) loose on the haunted prairie that was once Detroit, we should ponder why a great American metropolis was allowed to die. Mark Binelli, Motor City native returned, provides a picaresque but unflinchingly honest look at the crime scene. Like Richard Pryor, he has the rare talent to make you laugh and cry at the same time

—— Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

[The Last Days of Detroit] is a brilliant kaleidoscope of everything that is great, broken, inspiring, heart-breaking, and ultimately remarkable about Detroit. Mark Binelli has turned the story of the city, and by extension America, into a glorious, unforgettable work of art

—— Dinaw Mengestu, author of How to Read the Air

At once hilarious and sharp, sweeping and intimate, [The Last Days of Detroit] is an oddly delighted warning from the recent future. With the tender scrutiny of a returning exile, Mark Binelli has written a non-fiction novel about our American experiment, and it’s the most entertaining and persuasive book about this country I’ve read in a very long time

—— Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction

Mark Binelli is a first-rate reporter, gifted with the ability to get almost anybody to open up. [The Last Days of Detroit] is searching, wide-angle, honest, deeply moving, and unshakably dark. It is a vivid slice of our time and implies a disquieting prophecy of the future

—— Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York

An encounter with a longstanding black resident reveals underlying tensions “Detroit isn't some kind of abstract art project." Binelli's achievement is to make that vividly apparent

—— Andy Beckett , Guardian

Mark Binelli’s The Last Days of Detroit is a magnificent anthem to one of America’s most significant cities. He takes you on a tour into the dark heart of this once vibrant city, the home of the Ford car. This is a beautiful prose poem to a fascinating city and to post-industrial America

—— Patrick Neale , The Bookseller

Succeeds in bringing out angles on Detroit that at least this casual observer hadn’t heard before

—— Rose Jacobs , FT

Both a history and a thoughtful travelogue… British readers might wonder what Detroit has to do with them, but the collapse of manufacturing, its yawning unemployed, the tension generated by a usually white liberal class who seize on gentrification possibilities (and the desire to turn dereliction into abstract art) are universal modern concerns

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Mark Binelli’s surprisingly joyful book

—— Ed Caesar , Sunday Times

A remarkable trawl through the sorry and tragic recent history of a city that was once heralded as the future of the United States

—— Doug Johnstone , Big Issue

Binellis shows us that a brighter economic future may be possible even in the most benighted of cities

—— Rohan Silva , Prospect

The value of this book lies not just in its compelling story, but in its lessons for all the West

—— Robert Chesshyre , Literary Review

Now the city and above all its people have been brilliantly captured

—— David Goldblatt , Independent

[A] wry, inquisitive survey of Detroit's troubled past and present... Surprisingly joyful

—— Sunday Times

This journalistic account tells an enthralling, balanced story

—— Daily Telegraph
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