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Volume 2: The Brutality of Fact: A Novel (The American People Series)
by Larry Kramer
In The American People: Volume 2: The Brutality of Fact, Larry Kramer completes his radical reimagining of his country's history.
Ranging from the brothels of 1950s Washington, D.C., to the activism of the 1980s and beyond, Kramer offers an elaborate phantasmagoria of bigoted conspiracists in the halls of power and ordinary individuals suffering their consequences. With wit and bite, Kramer explores (among other things) the sex lives of every recent president; the complicated behavior of America's two greatest spies, J. Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton; the rise of Sexopolis, the country's favorite magazine; and the genocidal activities of every branch of our health-care and drug-delivery systems.
The American People: Volume 2 is narrated by (among others) the writer Fred Lemish and his two friends―Dr. Daniel Jerusalem, who works for America's preeminent health-care institution, and his twin brother, David Jerusalem, a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp who was abused by many powerful men. Together they track a terrible plague that intensifies as the government ignores it and depict the bold and imaginative activists who set out to shock the nation's conscience. In Kramer's telling, the United States is dedicated to the proposition that very few men are created equal, and those who love other men may be destined for death. Here is a historical novel like no other―satiric and impassioned and driven by an uncompromising moral and literary vision.
"Though the book is a flawless exercise in black humor, it is also filled with righteous anger—and, as each page indicates, not without good reason. Idiosyncratic, controversial, and eminently readable: a masterwork of alternative history." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This is a feast of relentless gibes and vitriol, shot through with savage humor and earnest passion. Kramer's righteous rage makes for irresistible, provocative reading." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The American People was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Larry Kramer is a screenwriter (Women in Love, Oscar nomination); a playwright (The Normal Heart, Tony Award); a bestselling novelist (Faggots); and an activist for gay rights and AIDS awareness (cofounder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and founder of ACT UP). He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, PEN, and Common Cause, and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Yale University.
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