“Though Virtual Americas is conditioned by Anglophone literary traditions, its critique of disciplines, such as American studies, that have ‘engendered their own imagined community’ will prove useful for Inter-American scholars working in other languages and literatures. . . . Virtual Americas deserves attention especially in times when some consider how the US cultural and technological apparatus helps reconfigure uncritical ‘monolithic national narratives’ and when academics are disciplined for examining the production of effects in a virtual culture.” — Óscar Fernández, Comparative Literature Studies
"Virtual Americas explores, with immense insight and breathtaking speed, both familiar and relatively obscure texts. . . ." — Hsuan L. Hsu , College Literature
"Taken of that basis, as a thought experiment in comparative method, [Giles'] book has much to offer, both in its unfamiliar readings of familiar texts and in its often lively assessment of the state of American studies today." — Bryan Wagner , American Literature
"This book is important for its strong challenge to American Studies, as well as for its illuminating and provocative essays on individual authors. . . . [A]n urgent and timely project." — Maria Stadter Fox , Intertexts
"Virtual Americas is an important contribution to recent attempts to read American literary history from outside traditional parameters. . . . [This] study is at its most impressive, I think, when it allows us to see both the material reality and the self-authorizing fictionality (what it calls virtuality) of American literature's nationalizing narratives." — Stuart Burrows , Modern Fiction Studies
“Virtual Americas is an ambitious, wide-ranging, well-written, and strikingly original text. There aren't many books about which one can say all those things—I think it will cause something of a stir.” — Lucy Maddox, Georgetown University
“Paul Giles's Virtual Americas is a major contribution to recent debates about transnationalism, U.S. and English cultural relations in the modern and postmodern eras, and the impact of these topics on the old and new American Studies. This is a first-rate book.” — John Carlos Rowe, University of California, Irvine