The Disunited States

By dint of names, dates, and figures, of classified ads, of sundry facts, of statistics, of the confessions of great writers and of anonymous passersby, of quotations from small-town newspapers and from official discourses, Vladimir Pozner reconstructs, vibrantly, so terribly vibrantly and magnificently, the American civilization. –Les Lettres Francaises

Vladimir Pozner–influential French novelist, screenwriter, pioneer in literary genre and Oscar nominee, came to the United States in the 1930’s. He found the nation and its people in a state of profound material and spiritual crisis, and took it upon himself to chronicle the life of the worker, the striker, the politician, the starlet, the gangster, the everyman; to document the bitter, violent racism tearing its society asunder, the overwhelming despair permeating everyday life, and the unyielding human struggle against it all. In the spirit of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Pozner writes about America and Americans with the searing criticism and deep compassion of an outsider who loved the country and its people far too much to render anything less than a brutally honest portrayal. Recalling Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, he shatters the rules of reportage to create a complete portrait of America, enduring and profound.