Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start gifting
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Nowās a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weāll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayOn Michael Jackson
This audiobook uses AI narration.
Weāre taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreMichael Jackson was once universally acclaimed as a song-and-dance man of genius; Wacko Jacko is now, more often than not, dismissed for his bizarre race and gender transformations and confounding antics, even as he is commonly reviled for the child molestation charges twice brought against him. Whence the weirdness and alleged criminality? How to account for Michael Jacksonās rise and fall? In On Michael Jacksonāan at once passionate, incisive, and bracing work of cultural analysisāPulitzer Prizeāwinning critic for The New York Times Margo Jefferson brilliantly unravels the complexities of one of the most enigmatic figures of our time.
Who is Michael Jackson and what does it mean to call him a āWhat Is Itā? What do P. T. Barnum, Peter Pan, and Edgar Allan Poe have to do with our fascination with Jackson? How did his curious Victorian upbringing and his tenure as a child prodigy on the āchitlinā circuitā inform his character and multiplicity of selves? How is Michael Jacksonās celebrity related to the outrageous popularity of nineteenth-century minstrelsy? What is the perverse appeal of child stars for grown-ups and what is the price of such stardom for these children and for us? What uncanniness provoked Michael Jackson to become āAlone of All His Race, Alone of All Her Sex,ā while establishing himself as an undeniably great performer with neo-Gothic, dandy proclivities and a producer of visionary music videos? What do we find so unnerving about Michael Jacksonās presumed monstrosity? In short, how are we all of us implicated?
In her stunning first book, Margo Jefferson gives us the incontrovertible lowdown on call-him-what-you-wish; she offers a powerful reckoning with a quintessential, richly allusive signifier of American society and popular culture.
The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism,Ā Margo JeffersonĀ previously served as book and arts critic forĀ NewsweekĀ andĀ theĀ New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications,Ā Vogue,Ā New YorkĀ Magazine,Ā The Nation, andĀ Guernica. Her memoir,Ā Negroland, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author ofĀ On Michael JacksonĀ and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Andrea JohnsonĀ is a freelance photographer specializing in wine and travel. She has covered many of the world's wine regions, and her photographs are regularly featured in publications such asĀ Wine Spectator,Ā VIA,Ā Sunset, theĀ San Francisco Chronicle,Ā andĀ National Geographic. Her previous books include photography for Rick Steves's Europe Through the Back Door series, and her commercial clients are many of the premier pinot noir producers worldwide.
The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism,Ā Margo JeffersonĀ previously served as book and arts critic forĀ NewsweekĀ andĀ theĀ New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications,Ā Vogue,Ā New YorkĀ Magazine,Ā The Nation, andĀ Guernica. Her memoir,Ā Negroland, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. She is also the author ofĀ On Michael JacksonĀ and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Andrea JohnsonĀ is a freelance photographer specializing in wine and travel. She has covered many of the world's wine regions, and her photographs are regularly featured in publications such asĀ Wine Spectator,Ā VIA,Ā Sunset, theĀ San Francisco Chronicle,Ā andĀ National Geographic. Her previous books include photography for Rick Steves's Europe Through the Back Door series, and her commercial clients are many of the premier pinot noir producers worldwide.
Reviews
"Stimulating.... Incisive, intelligent.... Engaging, well written and consistently on target." —The New York Times"Jefferson writes...with elegance and attitude....One closes the book hungry to hear her take on other talented but troubled celebrities." —The Washington Post
"Sparkling....Eloquent and provocative.... Watching Margo Jefferson's mind at work is as pleasurable and thrilling as seeing Michael Jackson dance." —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Hers is a dazzling act of sustained vivacity and wisdom. Margo Jefferson brilliantly illuminates both Michael Jackson’s psyche and his art, giving us in the process a fascinating broader picture of American pop culture. Shockingly, Jackson turns out to be as representative as he is singular." —Ann Douglas, author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s and The Feminization of American Culture
“Margo Jefferson, an unfailingly shrewd and eloquent cultural critic, finds in Michael Jackson a paradigm for probing the ambitions, desperations, triumphs, and sacrifices of an artist who stakes everything on a crown. Beyond palace intrigue, she explicates the meaning of show business masks, of racial and social determinants, of spectacle on stage and in the courtroom. She is compelling.” —Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird and Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores!
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks