Kurt Andersen's Heyday

Related Content

• Santa Monica Club Sucker Punch Puts Marine In Hospital; Cops Seek Loser
  May 1, 2013
• Santa Monica College Bomb Scare Prompts Evacuation
  April 23, 2013
• Happy National Caramel Popcorn Day: 5 Places to Eat Bacon Popcorn Instead
  April 5, 2013
• Five Artsy Things to Do This Week, Including Photos in a Red Line Metro Station
  November 7, 2012
• The Taco Madness Tournament Returns to L.A. Taco
  March 22, 2013

More About

• Kurt Andersen
• Benjamin Knowles
• James Marshall
• Graydon Carter
• Coloma

Lots of stuff happened in 1848. Darwin came up with his evolution theory. James Marshall discovered gold in Coloma. Wars were kicking around all over Europe — the French, for one, overthrew their king in the name of democracy. It is in this momentous year, the pinnacle of the Victorian era, that Kurt Andersen sets his much anticipated and extremely well-reviewed new novel Heyday, in which young British aristocrat Benjamin Knowles — lover of all things American — inadvertently sets off a revolution before setting sail for New York. Knowles falls in love with a beautiful prostitute, and — trusty newfound friend and muckraking journalist Skaggs at his side — pursues her cross-country to the California gold rush. Andersen is the former editor in chief of New York magazine, and co-founder, with Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, of the media rag Spy. (Perhaps you remember Spy Notes, the satirical version of Cliff’s Notes? I’m still chuckling over the entry for Bright Lights, Big City.) At 600 pages, his Heyday is Dickensian in scope and plotting, and is one of those historical novels best read into the wee hours of the night, when it’s sure to make you wistful for late-19th-century gas lamps, whose golden glow simultaneously revealed and hid a multitude of sins. Kurt Andersen reads and signsHeyday, Wed., March 28, 7:30 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, (310) 260-9110.