One of the major literary works by Andy Warhol, the subject of the new Netflix documentary The Andy Warhol Diaries, executive produced by Ryan Murphy

Andy Warhol carried a camera with him everywhere he went and America, a mélange of text and image whose photographs were selected by Warhol from ten years of extraordinary shots, echoes the strange beauty and staggering contradictions of the country itself. Exploring Warhol’s greatest obsessions—including image and celebrity—Warhol photographs wrestlers and politicians, the beautiful wealthy and the disenfranchised poor. Many well-known figures are found in these pages: Capote with the fresh scars of a face-lift, Madonna hiding beneath a brunette bob, a nude Keith Haring about to go for a dip in the sea. In America, Warhol writes about the country he loves, about how he wishes he had died when he was shot in 1968, about commercialism, fame, and beauty. An America without Warhol is almost as inconceivable as Warhol without America, and this touching, witty tribute is the great artist of the superficial at his most deeply personal.

Praise

“Warhol’s eye catches the odd contradiction, the outlandish, the amusing, the touching. It is never contemptuous. The cumulative effect tells us something about contemporary America beyond the familiar picture-magazine view. . . . a truth-telling oratory style not unlike that of Will Rogers, with echoes of Mark Twain.” —Library Journal

“He understood our obsession with celebrity culture better—and sooner—than anyone else.” —Sunday Telegraph

“He created his own universe and became its star.” —David Cronenberg, Guardian

“Warhol’s 1985 work [is] part photo-diary and part written observations of celebrity and mediocrity . . . While it’s tempting to just flip through and gaze at all the famous people, there’s plenty of poor, huddled, unrecognized masses yearning for a taste of the American Dream. After 30 years, Warhol’s writing is surprisingly insightful and even applicable to the 2015 political and social landscape.” —Barbara Basbanes Richter, Fine Books & Collections