America

We’re the states who thought of uniting into the best country in the world, and we’re the only country that thought of making the word part of our name. Brazil doesn’t call itself “Brazil of America.” So we’ve got a right to call ourselves “America” for short, any time we want. It’s a beautiful word, and everybody knows it means us.

Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and America, a mélange of text and image whose photographs were selected by Warhol from ten years of extraordinary shots, echoes the strange beauty and staggering contradictions of the country itself. Exploring Warhol’s greatest obsessions—including image and celebrity—Warhol photographs wrestlers and politicians, the beautiful wealthy and the disenfranchised poor. Many well-known figures are found in these pages: Capote with the fresh scars of a facelift, Madonna hiding beneath a brunette bob, a nude Keith Haring about to go for a dip in the sea. He writes about the country he loves, about how he wishes he had died when he was shot in 1968, about commercialism, fame and beauty. An America without Warhol is almost as inconceivable as Warhol without America, and this touching, witty tribute is the great artist of the superficial at his most deeply personal.