Menu
Next in the queue
67
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
70/100Critics
39/100Scholars
93/100Author:
Alex Ross
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
September 15, 2020
A large-canvas narrative history, charting the impact of the cultural titan Wagner on art and politics.
What The Reviewers Say
... a crowded and mesmerizing history.
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross’ magnificent new book.
... a work of enormous intellectual range and subtle artistic judgment that pokes and probes the nerve endings of Western cultural and social norms as they are mirrored in more than a century of reaction to Wagner’s works. The book has its own 'Wagnerian' heft and ambitiousness of intent, being nothing less than a history of ideas that spans an arc from Nietzsche and George Eliot to Philip K. Dick, Apocalypse Now and neo-Nazi skinheads.
He fleshes out his story with consummate authority and élan, even if he occasionally falls into the trap of elites-speaking-only-to-elites. But perhaps that elitism is purposeful, given Wagner's audiences. Ross is an unabashed Europhile.
