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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.

From the 1950s the phrase 'scandalous bestseller' began to appear on the covers of paperbacks such as Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, Couples by John Updike and Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. And in spite of a widespread belief that America had become unshockable, there continued to be bursts of controversy over works of literature dealing with sex, including Tony Kushner's Angels in America - subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, Susanna Moore's In the Cut and Patricia Cornwell's introduction of the first lesbian character in a mainstream crime series. The programme also features Nicholson Baker's response to discovering - in the Starr Report - that his erotically explicit book Vox was one of the love gifts given by Monica Lewinsky to President Clinton.