Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of many books of nonfiction (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I Wear the Black Hat, Fargo Rock City and Chuck Klosterman X) and two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons.
"Highly entertaining."
*Parade*
"Intellectually vigorous and entertaining."
*Publishers Weekly*
“That most of his subjects are from the pop-culture realm, whether
Andrew Dice Clay or Chevy Chase or the Eagles, does not diminish
the underlying sophistication of Klosterman’s guiding questions…. A
fine return to form for Klosterman, blending Big Ideas with heavy
metal, The Wire, Batman and much more.”
*Kirkus*
“Very much a product of his generation and as plugged into the
popular culture as Mencken was antagonistic to it, Klosterman is in
that same direct line of cultural critics as Bierce, Mencken, and
more recently, P. J. O’Rourke, and his posture is similarly arch
and iconoclastic…[I Wear the Black Hat] will amuse and/or outrage
but, either way, it should enlarge his audience.”
*Booklist*
"Astute and funny."
*USA Today*
"Highly entertaining...a beach classic."
*New York Times*
“Klosterman offers up great facts, interesting cultural insights,
and thought-provoking moral calculations in this look at our love
affair with the anti-hero.”
*New York Magazine*
"Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and
imaginative hypotheticals, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive
observations on the complexity of the antihero (seemingly the only
kind of hero America still creates). I Wear the Black Hat is a rare
example of serious criticism that’s instantly accessible and
really, really funny."
*DC Spotlight*
"Klosterman has a knack for holding up a magical high-def mirror to
American pop culture that makes all of our vanities and delusions
look painfully obvious. Spend enough time reading I Wear the Black
Hat, and you might even start to recognize, in its pages, your own
silly assumptions, your snap judgments, your stubborn loyalties and
your badly rationalized prejudices….By underscoring the
contradictory, often knee-jerk ways we encounter the heroes and
villains of our culture, Klosterman illustrates the passionate but
incomplete computations that have come to define American culture —
and maybe even American morality."
*Los Angeles Times*
"Klosterman's prose exhibits the same firecrack fizz and pop, and
his endearing/unnerving polemical habits remain in place."
*Time Out New York*
"A gleeful and often funny explanation of villainy, both fictional
and real."
*Minneapolis Star-Tribune*
"Klosterman considers how inconsistent, unpredictable and
surprisingly elastic the concept of villainy has been in American
culture since the 1970s....the entertainment value of his thought
processes and the quality of his prose are high."
*USA Today*
“With the aplomb of a modern Machiavelli surveying our ever
shifting moral landscape for examples that prove his point, Mr.
Klosterman takes the reader on a grand tour of villainy's outposts
in popular culture, sports, politics and American history. "I Wear
the Black Hat" is an erudite, provocative and playful survey of the
ever shifting face of villainy in the American experience.”
*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette*
"Klosterman attacks his subjects with intellectual rigor and
humor... you should read this thought-provoking book."
*Washington Post*
“[Klosterman’s] best work since Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs….If
you’ve ever sympathized with Darth Vader, second-guessed Muhammad
Ali or wondered how Bill Clinton got away with what he got away
with, you’re not alone. Read I Wear the Black Hat and see for
yourself.”
*Las Vegas Weekly*
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