Sarah Churchwell

The history America never wanted you to read. 'The narrative took my breath away' Philippe Sands 'An extraordinarily and shockingly powerful read' Peter Frankopan 'One of the must-reads of the year' Suzannah Lipscomb 'Brilliant and provocative' Gavin EslerSarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.Gone with the Wind was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936; its film version became the most successful Hollywood film of all time. Today the story's racism is again a subject of controversy, but it was just as controversial in the 1930s, foreshadowing today's debates over race and American fascism. In The Wrath to Come, Sarah Churchwell charts an extraordinary journey through 160 years of American denialism. From the Lost Cause to the romances behind the Ku Klux Klan, from the invention of the 'ideal' slave plantation to the erasure of interwar fascism, Churchwell shows what happens when we do violence to history, as collective denial turns fictions into lies, and lies into a vicious reality.

‘Ferociously smart. A rare combination of guilty pleasure and intellectual insight’ VOGUE‘Perceptive. Refreshing. Tears away layers of false readings and conspiracy theories’ NEW YORK TIMESIntricately researched. Churchwell’s Marilyn is a complex, well-rounded creature in the best sense – the human sense’ OBSERVERThere are many Marilyns: sex goddess and innocent child, crafty manipulator and dumb blonde, screen legend and Hollywood victim.In this incisive and subtle book, Sarah Churchwell looks at how the stories we tell have trivialised a woman we supposedly adore, and at what they reveal about our attitudes towards sex symbols and icons, to women, death, biography and Marilyn herself.

SELECTED AS A 2018 SUMMER READ BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, I-PAPER AND THE BIG ISSUE'Enormously entertaining' SUNDAY TIMES'Fascinating' NEW STATESMAN'Excoriating, brilliant' ALI SMITH'Enthralling' GUARDIAN'My number one contributor when it comes to US politics' DAN SNOW‘The American dream is dead,’ Donald Trump said when announcing his candidacy for president in 2015. How would he revive it? By putting ‘America First’. The ‘American Dream’ and ‘America First’ are two of the most loaded phrases in America today – and also two of the most misunderstood. As divides within America widen, Sarah Churchwell looks to the past to reveal what the surprising history of these two phrases can tell us about today.

A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018 The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases -- the "American dream" and "America First" -- that once embodied opposing visions for America. Starting as a Republican motto before becoming a hugely influential isolationist slogan during World War I, America First was always closely linked with authoritarianism and white supremacy. The American dream, meanwhile, initially represented a broad vision of democratic and economic equality. Churchwell traces these notions through the 1920s boom, the Depression, and the rise of fascism at home and abroad, laying bare the persistent appeal of demagoguery in America and showing us how it was resisted. At a time when many ask what America's future holds, Behold, America is a revelatory, unvarnished portrait of where we have been.

Kirkus (STARRED review)"Churchwell... has written an excellent book... she's earned the right to play on Fitzgerald's] court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page."The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America's carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home in the glamorous and reckless streets of New York. Here, in the final incredible months of 1922, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald drank and quarreled and partied amid financial scandals, literary milestones, car crashes, and celebrity disgraces. Yet the Fitzgeralds' triumphant return to New York coincided with another event: the discovery of a brutal double murder in nearby New Jersey, a crime made all the more horrible by the farce of a police investigation--which failed to accomplish anything beyond generating enormous publicity for the newfound celebrity participants. Proclaimed the "crime of the decade" even as its proceedings dragged on for years, the Mills-Hall murder has been wholly forgotten today. But the enormous impact of this bizarre crime can still be felt in The Great Gatsby, a novel Fitzgerald began planning that autumn of 1922 and whose plot he ultimately set within that fateful year. Careless People is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of America's best loved novel. Overturning much of the received wisdom of the period, Careless People blends biography and history with lost newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival materials. With great wit and insight, acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about Fitzgerald's masterpiece. Interweaving the biographical story of the Fitzgeralds with the unfolding investigation into the murder of Hall and Mills, Careless People is a thrilling combination of literary history and murder mystery, a mesmerizing journey into the dark heart of Jazz Age America.

Sarah Churchwell introduces a collection of stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald: some classic, some forgotten.

A fascinating look at the autumn of 1922, when F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda returned to New York and the seeds for The Great Gatsby were sown