Capturing America: Mark Lawson's History of Modern American Literature - Divided States

Mark Lawson tells the story of how American writing became the literary superpower of the 20th century, telling the nation's stories of money, power, sex, religion and war. Each American president ends speeches by asking God to bless 'these United States'. But in a nation born through war - and later almost split by civil conflict - there remain deep divisions of colour and opportunity. Mark Lawson explores the way in which this legacy of division and violence has been explored by the nation's authors. He talks to writers including Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, James Ellroy and Walter Mosley and literary critic Professor Harold Bloom, who nominates Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian as the greatest modern American novel because it deals with the violence at the heart of American life.