America - Joe Queenan

Joe Queenan's original intention in writing this book was to plumb the depths of mass culture. At first, he found things every bit as bad as he expected.

On Cats: 'What Grease would look like if all the cast members dressed up like KISS.'

On music: 'If it's a crime to burn the American flag, why isn't it a crime for Michael Bolton to butcher Irving Berlin's "White Christmas"?'

On the movies: 'Casting Demi Moore as a woman who has come to the New World so that she can "worship without fear of persecution" in The Scarlet Letter is like casting Bruce Willis as the young Ren Descartes.'

But then something happened.

Joe Queenan started enjoying Liberace albums. He said nice things about Larry King in his weekly TV column. He developed a compulsion to watch The A-Team. In America, Joe Queenan set out to explore the depths of schlock. What happened on his journey adds up to his funniest - and most frightening - book yet.