This lavishly illustrated book explores the tremendous scope, richness, toughness sensibility and liveliness of the American realist tradition. Sixteen varied sections discuss and display the finest and most important work of different artists, groups, schools and periods - including American Impressionism, The Ashcan School, Precisionism, American Scene Painting, Edward Hopper, Urban realism, Photorealism and Postmodern realism today - and provide convincing proof that the American realist legacy occupies an unparalleled position in the world art of the past one hundred years. In this important critical synthesis, Edward Lucie-Smith discusses the work of the pioneering masters of American realism, such as Thomas Etkins, Mary Cassatt, Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O'Keesse and Andrew Wyeth. He adds a major new dimension in his examination of the work of contemporary realist painters: those currently acknowledged as major figures today, such as Wayne Thiebaud and Leon Golub, but also those whose reputations and contribution have only fairly recently been fully appreciated, among them Isabel Bishop, Alice Neel and Fairfield Porter, as well as younger artists, such as Eric Fischl and Jeff Koons, who have achieved star status as practitioners of this innovative tradition. The book thus carries the story of American realism right up to the present moment, and shows how it continues to flourish in the United States today as strongly as it has in the past. A magnificent volume, with over one hundred colour plates, American Realism both celebrates and reveals the strengths of a great American legacy.