Things Snowball

Book excerpt: I stopped off at the Peace Gardens - a memorial straddling the US-Canadian border commemorating 'Lasting Peace Between America and Canada', as if there had ever been a problem. Show me a garden commemorating Peace Between America and, say, Iraq and I'll be impressed. America is like a beauty contestant. It's gorgeous, until it opens its mouth.' From the similarities between US gun laws and British drinking hours, to what cryptic crosswords really tell us about the British psyche, American in London Rich Hall casts a keen eye on the lunatic contradictions and weird marvels of his native and adoptive homelands. 'Full of acute left-field reflections on America and Americans, plus some marvellously irreverent sketches ...wise, witty and strangely true' GUARDIAN