“Ranging as he does from Monica Lewinsky to David Lynch, Lou Reed back to Philip Roth, the Pixies to Pere Ubu, the great cultural critic Greil Marcus suggests in The Shape of Things to Come that in the USA, artists rather than politicians truly have the measure of the country.” —Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Horse Latitudes

“A pirate radio station broadcasting late at night from the heart of the lost republic.” —D. D. Guttenplan, The Times Literary Supplement (London)

“There are wonders on nearly every page, connections made and broken between history and pop culture, and always there is Marcus's gift for summoning up an entire phenomenon in a single sentence.” —Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly

“Like Lipstick Traces, this book is an impossible fever dream- conversation, in which Abraham Lincoln, Sleater-Kinney, obscure bluesmen, old punks, characters from 24, Sinclair Lewis, and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each other on some frequency that only Marcus can transcribe. The cacophony is in us, and in such scary times it's imperative that we listen.” —Frances Reade, San Francisco Weekly

“His writing is cool, vivid, fixated--and you see what he sees. . . . I will commit myself: this book is brilliant. Frightening, exciting, sickening. It brings you alive as an American.” —Devin McKinney, The American Prospect