In June of 1992, when all the polls showed that Bill Clinton didn't have a chance, he took his saxophone onto the Arsenio Hall show, put on dark glasses, and blew "Heartbreak Hotel." Greil Marcus, one of America's most imaginative and insightful popular culture critics, was the first to name this as the moment that turned Clinton's campaign around-and to make sense of why. Double Trouble draws on articles Marcus published from 1992 to 2000 to explore the remarkable and illuminating kinship between Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley-and, moreover, to explore how culture is made and shared in today's America and how, through culture, people remake themselves.
Double Trouble is a unique and essential book about the final years of the twentieth century. This edition also includes a new essay Marcus wrote just before the 2000 presidential election: an eerily prescient piece that looks forward to two very different futures for ex-President Bill Clinton.
Industry Reviews
"His strongest work in the quarter-century since he published his classic Mystery Train . . . The finest rock critic around." --Adam Liptak, The New York Observer
"Marcus is probably the world's greatest living rock critic, and a virtuoso at projecting the rockin' way of knowledge into the larger world outside . . . A mythic cultural history of Slick Willie's presidency." --Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent (London)
"A collection of forty short essays brimming with savvy commentary, pithy anecdotes, trenchant observations, and rollicking satire . . . Offer[s] irresistibly offbeat glimpses into the zeitgeist of the last decade of the twentieth century." --Douglas Brinkley, The Los Angeles Times His strongest work in the quarter-century since he published his classic "Mystery Train" . . . The finest rock critic around. "Adam Liptak, The New York Observer"
Marcus is probably the world's greatest living rock critic, and a virtuoso at projecting the rockin' way of knowledge into the larger world outside . . . A mythic cultural history of Slick Willie's presidency. "Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent (London)"
A collection of forty short essays brimming with savvy commentary, pithy anecdotes, trenchant observations, and rollicking satire . . . Offer[s] irresistibly offbeat glimpses into the zeitgeist of the last decade of the twentieth century. "Douglas Brinkley, The Los Angeles Times"" "His strongest work in the quarter-century since he published his classic "Mystery Train" . . . The finest rock critic around."--Adam Liptak, "The New York Observer"
"Marcus is probably the world's greatest living rock critic, and a virtuoso at projecting the rockin' way of knowledge into the larger world outside . . . A mythic cultural history of Slick Willie's presidency."--Charles Shaar Murray, "The Independent" (London)
"A collection of forty short essays brimming with savvy commentary, pithy anecdotes, trenchant observations, and rollicking satire . . . Offer[s] irresistibly offbeat glimpses into the zeitgeist of the last decade of the twentieth century."--Douglas Brinkley, " The Los Angeles Times"
