Kurt Andersen Books In Order

Turn of the Century

The millennium is here. BarbieWorld has opened in Vegas. Charles Manson’s parole hearing is on live TV. And George and Lizzie are a Manhattan power couple with three kids in private school and take out from Hiroshima Boy waiting at the door. Lizzie owns a software start up. George is a TV producer. With cell phones tickling their thighs and gossip buzzing in their ears, their future couldn’t be brighter. Until, that is, Lizzie cuts a deal with George’s boss and gets an office twenty one floors above her husband’s…
Until all the glitter and the hype threaten to destroy George’s and Lizzie’s sanity and their marriage…
Until the only thing that can save them is a little understanding at a time when everyone is talking but no one can hear a thing.

In his brash, brilliant first novel, media insider Kurt Andersen casts a penetrating eye on our giddy, media obsessed era. With a keen sense of irony and a storyteller’s grace, the co founder of Spy magazine weaves a tale that is at once a biting satire of America in the near future and a wickedly incisive portrait of marriage, family, love, and friendship. A crackling, cybercharged joyride through our millennium, Turn of the Century is pure, eye popping entertainment.

Heyday

Heyday is a brilliantly imagined, wildly entertaining tale of America’s boisterous coming of age a sweeping panorama of madcap rebellion and overnight fortunes, palaces and brothels, murder and revenge as well as the story of a handful of unforgettable characters discovering the nature of freedom, loyalty, friendship, and true love.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is being born: the mind boggling marvels of photography, the telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business spectacles and newspapers; rampant sex and drugs and drink and moral crusades against all three; Wall Street awash with money; and giddy utopian visions everywhere. Then, during a single amazing month at the beginning of 1848, history lurches: America wins its war of manifest destiny against Mexico, gold is discovered in northern California, and revolutions sweep across Europe sending one eager English gentleman off on an epic transatlantic adventure…
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Amid the tumult, aristocratic Benjamin Knowles impulsively abandons the Old World to reinvent himself in New York, where he finds himself embraced by three restless young Americans: Timothy Skaggs, muckraking journalist, daguerreotypist, pleasure seeker, stargazer; the fireman Duff Lucking, a sweet but dangerously damaged veteran of the Mexican War; and Duff s dazzling sister Polly Lucking, a strong minded, free thinking actress and discreet part time prostitute with whom Ben falls hopelessly in love.

Beckoned by the frontier, new beginnings, and the prospects of the California Gold Rush, all four set out on a transcontinental race west relentlessly tracked, unbeknownst to them, by a cold blooded killer bent on revenge.

A fresh, impeccable portrait of an era startlingly reminiscent of our own times, Heyday is by turns tragic and funny and sublime, filled with bona fide heroes and lost souls, visionaries Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Alexis de Tocqueville and monsters, expanding horizons and narrow escapes. It is also an affecting story of four people passionately chasing their American dreams at a time when America herself was still being dreamed up an enthralling, old fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel of ideas.
‘In this utterly engaging novel, the author of Turn of the Century brings 19th century America vividly to life…
While this is a long book, it moves quickly, with historical detail that’s involving but never a drag on the action; the characters are beautifully drawn. A terrific book; highly recommended.’ Library Journal
‘Heyday is fuled by manic energy, fanatical research, and a wicked sense of humor…
. It’s a joyful, wild gallop through a joyful, wild time to be an American.’ Vanity Fair

From the Hardcover edition.

The Real Thing

You may already know that Belgium is the most boring country on planet Earth, but do you know why? Or what makes the Mark 44, Model O Lazy Dog Missile Cluster, the sexiest piece of military hardware on wheels? Or how LSD edged out all contenders as the Platonic Ideal of illicit drugs?From cities to sitcoms, from scotch to soda, from English monarchs to French movies, The Real Thing is a compendium of the quintessential, providing definitive answers to some of the most compelling questions of our time: What confection out cholesterols the competition? Why is The Country Club the country club? Which Charlie Chan proved the least scrutable? Author Kurt Andersen’s pithy pronouncements sparkle with wit, sophistication, and a healthy dose of skeptical good humor as he strips world culture of accumulated hype and accepted wisdom, laying bare the sine qua nons and the ne plus ultras in a sassy series of satirical essays that give credit where credit is due while simultaneously foreclosing on the bogus, the ersatz, the would be, and the has been. The Real Thing is The Real Thing. These days, that s really something.

Spy (With: Graydon Carter,George Kalogerakis)

Just in time for the 20th anniversary of Spy’s creation comes the definitive anthology, inside story, and scrapbook. Spy: The Funny Years will remind the magazine s million readers why they loved and depended on Spy and bring to a new generation the jewels of its reporting and writing, photography, illustration, design, and world class mischief making. It will demonstrate Spy s singular niche in American magazine and cultural history. But it is also intended to be enjoyed on its own: one beautiful volume containing Spy s funniest and most creative work, along with the ultimate insiders account of how it all came to be. All the best is here: Separated at Birth; Naked City; The Fine Print; Logrolling in Our Time; the Blurb o Mat; those hysterical and now ubiquitous charts; the inside stories on the New York Times and Hollywood by J.J. Hunsecker and Celia Brady; the covers; investigative features; and the hilarious stories on pretty much everyone who was anyone during the late 80s and early 90s. Not to mention the often grisly but always entertaining regular cast of characters from Spy s pages the churlish dwarf billionaires; beaver faced moguls; bull whip wielding uber agents; knobby kneed socialites; and, of course, short fingered vulgarians. During its heyday, from 1986 through 1993, Spy broke important ground in journalism and design, defining smartness for its generation. It was a once in a lifetime creation that shaped the zeitgeist and succeeded for a while against all odds. Spy: The Funny Years will be the fun, stylish, hilarious holiday gift of the year.

Reset

This is the end of the world as we ve known it, Kurt Andersen writes in Reset. But it isn t the end of the world. In this smart and refreshingly hopeful book, Andersen a brilliant analyst and synthesizer of historical and cultural trends, as well as a bestselling novelist and host of public radio’s Studio 360 shows us why the current economic crisis is actually a moment of great opportunity to get ourselves and our nation back on track.

Historically, America has always shifted between wild, exuberant speculation and steady, sober hard work, as well as back and forth between economic booms and busts, and between right and left politically. This is one of the rare moments when all these cycles shift dramatically and simultaneously a moment when complacency ends, ossified structures loosen up, and enormous positive change is possible.

The shock to the system can enable each of us to rethink certain habits and focus more on the things that make us authentically happy. The present flux can enable us as a society to consolidate the enormous gains of the last several decades in areas such as technology, crime prevention, women s and civil rights, and the democratization of the planet. We can reap the fruits of a revival of realism and pragmatism at home and abroad. As we enter a new era of post party line common sense, we can start to reinvent hopelessly broken systems in health care, education, climate change, and more and rediscover some of the old fashioned American values of which we ve lost sight.

In Reset, Andersen explains how we ve done it before and why we are about to do it again and better than ever.

From the Hardcover edition.