Things Snowball

<P>I stopped off at the Peace Gardens - a memorial straddling the US-Canadian border commemorating ''Lasting Peace Between America and Canada'', as if there had ever been a problem. Show me a garden commemorating Peace Between America and, say, Iraq and I''ll be impressed. <br> America is like a beauty contestant. It''s gorgeous, until it opens its mouth.''<br><br>From the similarities between US gun laws and British drinking hours, to what cryptic crosswords really tell us about the British psyche, American in London Rich Hall casts a keen eye on the lunatic contradictions and weird marvels of his native and adoptive homelands.<br><br>''Full of acute left-field reflections on America and Americans, plus some marvellously irreverent sketches ...wise, witty and strangely true'' GUARDIAN</P>