"Essays about 1990s popular culture, politics, sports, literature, music." --

After a bestselling and acclaimed diversion into fiction, Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, returns to the form in which he's been spectacularly successful with a collection of essays about our consumption of pop culture and sports.
Q: What is this book about?

A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet—I've just picked it up and casually glanced at the back cover. There clearly...

As Americans, we face two fundamental questions: First, are we truly prepared to fight this new war to wipe out terrorism and terrorist regimes, and win it decisively -- no matter what sacrifices it requires or how long it takes? Second, are we once again prepared to teach our children the fundamental principles and values that make this country great -- the values that make this country worth fighting for, living for, and dying for? Sean Hannity...

"We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there's nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes...

Eighty-eight essays on topics ranging from abortion and affirmative action to school vouchers and the death penalty.

"Throughout his twenty-five-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit." --

From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a "pyrotechnic insanitarium," Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream...

Gil Troy, a native of Queens, New York, is Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons (Kansas), an updated, paperback edition of Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II (Free Press); and of See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (Free Press). Did America's fortieth president lead a conservative counterrevolution...

"Dispatches from the Gilded Age is a collection of essays by Julia Reed, one of America's greatest chroniclers. In the middle of the night on March 11, 1980, the phone rang in Julia Reed's Georgetown dorm. It was her boss at Newsweek, where she was an intern. He told her to get in her car and drive to her alma mater, the Madeira School. Her former headmistress, Jean Harris, had just shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, The Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Julia didn't...