Michael Jackson died in 2009, but he has never really left us and there
are no signs he ever will.
A globally acclaimed child star in the 1970s, the world's premier
entertainer in the final decades of the 20th century, a perplexingly odd
character in the 21st century, Jackson defied every known category and
became borderline incomprehensible. To remedy this, in The
Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson, Ellis Cashmore reflects
the restless, unorthodox and mysterious life Jackson led in order to
understand more about him as well as his cultural impact.
Exploring how Jackson emerged from the post-civil rights era when
America was searching for someone who symbolized a new age as it
struggled to unburden itself of racial inequality, Cashmore's book is
the first to examine Jackson's career through the prisms of American
racial politics and celebrity culture.
Uniquely structured, beginning in the present and journeying back to
Jackson's birth, The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson will
excite and enliven debates on this controversial figure, one that very
much continues to remain embedded within our culture.