From the author of the highly acclaimed heavy metal memoir, Fargo Rock City, comes another hilarious and discerning take on massively popular culture--set in Chuck Klosterman's den and your own--covering everything from the effect of John Cusack flicks to the crucial role of breakfast cereal to the awesome power of the Dixie Chicks.

Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman. With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter,...

Building on the national bestselling success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, preeminent pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman unleashes his best book yet--the story of his cross-country tour of sites where rock stars have died and his search for love, excitement, and the meaning of death.

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the span of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships...

Coming off the breakthrough success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself to Live, bestselling pop culture guru Chuck Klosterman assembles his best work previously unavailable in book form--including the ground-breaking 1996 piece about his chicken McNuggets experiment, his uncensored profile of Britney Spears, and a previously unpublished short story--all recontextualized in Chuck's unique voice with new intros, outros, segues, and masterful footnotes.

Chuck Klosterman IV consists of three parts:

Things That Are True--Profiles and trend stories:...

Empirically proving that--no matter where you are--kids wanna rock, this is Chuck Klosterman's hilrious memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakotoa (population: 498).

With a voice like Ace Frehley's guitar, Klosterman hacks his way through hair-band history, beginning with that fateful day in 1983 when his older brother brought home Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil. The fifth-grade Chuck wasn't quite ready to rock--his hair was too short and his farm was too quiet--but he still found a way to bang his nappy little head. Before the journey was over, he...

For 6,557 miles, from New York to Mississippi to Seattle, Chuck Klosterman decided to chase rock 'n' roll and death across a continent. 21 days later, after three relationships, an encounter with various snakes, and a night spent snorting cocaine in a grav

Each week, the writers of The A.V. Club issue a slightly slanted pop-culture list filled with challenging opinions (Is David Bowie's "Young Americans" nearly ruined by saxophone?) and fascinating facts. Exploring 24 great films too painful to watch twice, 14 tragic movie-masturbation scenes, 18 songs about crappy cities, and much more, Inventory combines a massive helping of new lists created especially for the book with a few favorites first seen at avclub.com and in the pages of The A.V. Club's sister publication, The Onion.

But wait There's more: John Hodgman...

Let the debate begin...

The Advanced Genius Theory, hatched by Jason Hartley and Britt Bergman over pizza, began as a means to explain why icons such as Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Sting seem to go from artistic brilliance in their early careers to "losing it" as they grow older. The Theory proposes that they don't actually lose it, but rather, their work simply advances beyond our comprehension. The ramifications and departures of this argument are limitless, and so are the examples worth considering, such as George Lucas's Jar Jar Binks, Stanley Kubrick's fascination with coffee...

You are in an unfortunate situation in which you are forced to consider cannibalism in order to stay alive. WOULD YOU RATHER EAT BABIES OR ELDERLY PEOPLE?
You are offered a Brain Pill that will make you feel 10 percent more intelligent, but you will seem 20 percent less intelligent to everyone else. DO YOU TAKE THE PILL?
SUPPOSE YOU WAKE UP INHABITING BRUCE SPRINGSTEIN'S BODY. Your voice sounds just like Bruce's, but your musical ability is still entirely your own. You are scheduled to perform in a huge concert that night. WHAT DO YOU DO?
How would your...

One-of-a-kind cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author Chuck 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).

Chuck Klosterman, "The Ethicist" for The New York Times Magazine, has walked into the darkness. In I Wear the Black Hat, he questions the modern understanding of villainy. When we classify someone as a bad person, what are we really saying, and why are we so obsessed with saying it? How does the culture...