Cork-Lined Roomโ€“now thereโ€™s a band Iโ€™d go hear.

A History of the American People really is worth reading from cover to cover, though Iโ€™d like to rewrite the part about jazz. Still, Iโ€™d dearly love to have written a book like thatโ€“an old-fashioned large-scale narrative history that reeks of panache.

So who shows me the secret handshake?