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In "Scar-Strangled Banger" (Salem House), a wide-ranging collection of his drawings, paintings, and photos of the land of the free and bravo, British illustrator Ralph Steadman cocks a snook at America and affectionately lampoons us as "a nation in its youthful death." Steadman tackles Texas, Tammy Faye Bakker, and Tricky Dick (at right, two photo combos, of Ronald Reagan and Nixon, and Nixon and Joan Collins), dreaming of an America only an Englishman could love. • Certainly no less cynical than Steadman is Marie Kostabi, whose paintings (at left, one from 1986) have been collected in the volume "Sadness Because the Video Rental Store Was Closed & Other Stories" (Abbeville). Alarmingly alienated from nearly anything important in American culture, Kostabi's disaffected Day-Glo world swaps the kinky chic of downtown yuppies for artistic prowess and nearly gets away with it.

CRAIG BROMBERG