A Selected Bibliography of Writings by Bernard Shaw on Americans and the United States

The sixty-nine items below, spanning 1885 to 1948, evince Shaw’s perennial interest in (and often distaste for) all things American: from copyright, censorship, Prohibition, and Hollywood, to American elections, Theodore Roosevelt, the USA and World War I, and the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial. One of Shaw’s shortest pronouncements is from the New York American of 22 February 1934: “Americans are now the worst governed people in the world. They are now a nation of white slaves.” The longest is Shaw’s contentious NBC radio broadcast speech, “The Future of Political Science in America,” delivered in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City on 11 April 1933, and revised and republished under various titles: The Future of Political Science in America, American Boobs, and The Political Madhouse in America and Nearer Home. References in brackets are to Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, 2 vols. (Clarendon, 1983).