Pulphead (Essays (Expanded Edition))

Named a Best Book of 2011 by The New York Times, Time, The Boston Globe, and Entertainment Weekly

A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America’s cultural landscape after the turn of the millennium—from high to low to lower than low—now with a new introduction and three additional essays.

Traipsing through popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture of the 2000s, John Jeremiah Sullivan simultaneously channels the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion—with a laid-back, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own. Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose, and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. And, in iconic essays newly added to this expanded edition, he explores horse racing in his native Kentucky with his sportswriter father, Disney World with his children, and the expanse of Alaska with Bristol Palin’s baby daddy.

Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Now with a new essay reflecting on how our world has changed since the book’s first publication, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with Sullivan’s work—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to Pulphead’s staying power.