American Visions: Epic History of Art in America (Hardcover)

"It should simply not go unread by anyone who is at all interested in seeing, in a moral or aesthetic sense. Hughes isn’t only a polymath; he is a polypath" Candia McWilliam, Independent on Sunday (Books of the Year)

"It is a brilliant combination of wood and trees - a big history with a broad overview, but also with exquisitely detailed critiques of individual works. And of course the illustrations are a joy" Lynn Barber, Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year)

"American Visions isn’t simply a remarkable history of US painting, but a quite remarkable history of America itself" Malcolm Bradbury, Independent (Books of the Year)

"Not simply a study of art in America, but American culture as well and reveals how broad is the scope of this remarkable critics mind" Erica Wagner, The Times (Books of the Year)

"Superbly panoramic, sharply detailed and gorgeously illustrated history of the art of his adopted country" Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (Books of the Year)

"Tells the story of America through its diverse visual culture: passionately observed, erudite and playful" Eileen Battersby, Irish Times (Books of the Year)

"A masterpiece of accessible pleasure, exemplary, necessary, stuff" Donny O’Rourke, Scotsman (Books of the Year)

"Behind every scintillating page of this book lies a wonderment at America today. The fact that Robert Hughes’s interests are wide and his understanding broad means that American Visions has a breathtaking cultural reach. It starts quite simply with an appreciation of the works, be they painting, furniture or architecture, and relates them with extraordinary insight to the times. There is no pointless obeisance to minorities (although deep understanding), there is no patronising elevation of women, and above all there is no cant. This is a wonderful book" Justin Cartwright, Financial Times

"A mightily impressive, beautifully written, astute and capacious book" William Boyd, Spectator

"American Visions is a banquet of a book, written with all of Hughes’s entertaining pungency, and with an encyclopaedic grasp of hundreds of artists and architects" J.G. Ballard, Sunday Times

"It’s not often one gets the chance to say this, so I shall seize the day. Robert Hughes is a great man. He is a devoted, passionate, sensitive, western-educated man who sees something as irreducible and timeless as justice in these sculptures, buildings and paintings. For Hughes is, you see, a serious man and, in our time, to be serious is to be great. Simple as that" Brian Appleyard, New Statesman & Society

"Bursting with energy, insight and enthusiasm" Robert McCrum, Observer

"Robert Hughes is the greatest art critic at work today. One might go so far as to say he is the greatest critic in any discipline, period. While a writer of Robert Hughes’s stature is at large, the art world still has a Titan, if not a Titian" Anthony Quinn, Harpers & Queen

"A straightforward, vigorously written, quirky and opinionated guide" Richard Dorment, Daily Telegraph

"Magnificent, tendentious, continually fascinating history of the whole of American art. A book of unflagging fascination and inspiration" Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday

"Brilliantly put insights, and delightful slivers of unexpected information with which he decorates his text" Waldemar Janusczak, Sunday Times

"The breadth and energy of his book are surely its own best justification; he is a gifted, highly intelligent populariser, and he genuinely knows and loves his many sided subject" Brian Fallon, Irish Times

"A book to be read as much for the information it contains as for its pleasing, racy prose style" Art Review

"A beautiful and essential book" Lee Siegal, New York Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.