"Stunning . . . No one has exposed the shortsightedness, hubris, corruption, and instability of our country's imperial overreach with such impassioned incisiveness. Blowback is a wake-up call for America."—John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"A meditation on the roots of popular culture . . . Kasson has gathered fascinating material on the man who, in producing a pageant of American triumphalism, helped create the commercial world of entertainment that today we take for granted . . . Kasson skillfully shows us Cody as performer, icon, impresario. And what a show he put on!"—Tom Engelhardt, The Los Angeles Book Review

"A powerful book, a harrowing case study made all the more so by Madigan's skillful, clear-eyed telling of it."—Adam Nossiter, The New York Times Book Review

"The birth of hip-hop out of the ruin of the South Bronx is a story that has been told many times, but never with the cinematic scope and the analytic force that Chang brings to it. Robert Moses unleashes the destructive juggernaut of the Cross-Bronx Expressway; landlords set fire to worthless tenements; police stand by and do nothing; and, against a backdrop of gang warfare, peacemaking d.j.s lay down the heavy beats and spidery loops around which a rapping, dancing, graffiti-painting culture grows. This is one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written. Chang is blind to no one's greed or viciousness, but he retains an idealistic view of a music that speaks the truth about the alternately stultifying and horrifying urban landscapes that the parents who hate hip-hop have made."—The New Yorker