Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson

<p><b>Finalist: PROSE Awards 2023 - Media and Cultural Studies</b> <p/>Michael Jackson died in 2009 but he has never really left us and there are no signs he ever will. <p/>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 <b><i>The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson</i></b> Ellis Cashmore reflects the restless unorthodox and mysterious life Jackson led in order to understand more about him as well as his cultural impact. <p/>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. <br>Uniquely structured beginning in the present and journeying back to Jackson's birth <i>The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson</i> will excite and enliven debates on this controversial figure one that very much continues to remain embedded within our culture.</p>