From the author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces, an exhilarating and provocative investigation of the tangle of American identity. "America is a place and a story, made up of exuberance and suspicion, crime and liberation, lynch mobs and escapes; its greatest testaments are made of portents and warnings, biblical allusions that lose all certainty in the American air." It is this story of self-invention and nationhood that Greil Marcus rediscovers,...

This book, a sequel and companion volume to Marcus's Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014, is a collection of hundreds of items from the crisscrossing spectrum of culture and politics throughout the tumultuous past six years of American life. Tracking the evolution of national identity during the convulsive Trump administration, Marcus spotlights the most whip-smart cultural artifacts to compose a mosaic portrait of American society,...