Can you pack all of America into a book? History and present? Pop culture and piety? Shiny surfaces and disappointed promises? With "Pulphead," John Jeremiah Sullivan has proven that it is possible. In the tradition of masters like Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson, he blurs the line between literature and journalism, narrative and reportage, high literature and entertainment, Hemingway and Hollywood. Like in a panopticon, articles about Axl Rose, Christian rock festivals, reality TV, the Tea Party movement, forgotten naturalists, and the dilapidated South create a panorama of a country that the rest of the world increasingly struggles to understand. "Pulphead" sparked true enthusiasm in the USA, and the excitement has long since reached the old world, specifically Germany.