Interesting Times

ONE NATION SUBJECT TO CHANGE America at the turn of the twentieth century and just after is the focus of this collection of essays and nonfiction from a veteran journalist, essayist, critic and observer of American life and popular culture. Venturing from an insider's perspective of The New York Times to his interviews with black police officers, Michael E. Ross explores a nation evolving dramatically, maybe now more than any other time in its history. Exploring television, blues, jazz, hip hop, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Andrew Sullivan, Jayson Blair, the California recall election's outcome, America's gun fixation, the nation's enduring racial disquiet, the use of language under "Bush II, " and his own reckoning with maturity, the author offers a fresh, irreverent, provocative look at a country caught up in wrenching - and redefining - transition. MICHAEL E. ROSS has been a reporter, editor and critic at The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. His reviews, fiction, essay sand reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Konch, MSNBC Internet and other publications.